B.B. King, as photographed by Bill Steber.

B.B. King, the King of the Blues, would have turned 100 on Sept. 16. Most Americans know his name, his primacy among blues legends, and the singular identity of his beloved hollow-body Gibson guitar named Lucille.

Ten years after his 2015 death, people might have a harder time recalling why B.B. King matters. Here’s a quick refresher.

Born Sept. 16, 1925, in the Mississippi Delta, Riley “B.B.” King overcame wrenching poverty and Jim Crow, a system of laws stacked against Black Americans in the South. Then, in the 1950s, he rose to fame as the nation’s premier blues artist.

B.B. King created and popularized a new style of solo guitar, modeled on the natural tremolo of a human voice. When King stopped singing and Lucille started soloing, he liked to think that she was taking over.

Was B.B. King the first guitar hero?

It’s hard to imagine a time when no one bent a note on a guitar. Guitar heroes sat front and center in thousands of pop bands from the Woodstock era on, with many playing like B.B. King.

But King came first. He toiled for more than a decade, through the 1950s into the 1960s. And ever so gradually, other guitarists began to adopt his signature style. The first were Black blues guitar acolytes, including Buddy Guy and Albert King. From them, the style spread to white blues guitarists in Britain, including Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

With the British Invasion, the B.B. King style of solo guitar crossed back over to America, ultimately embraced by virtually every lead guitarist of the late ‘60s and ‘70s and beyond, from Jimi Hendrix to David Gilmour, Carlos Santana, Billy Gibbons and Prince.

King’s own career had distinct chapters. From his first gigs in 1940s Memphis through the mid-1960s, he was known and celebrated almost exclusively within the Black community. He toured the segregated Chitlin’ Circuit. His records sold mostly to Black listeners.

Early on, B.B. King's guitar work went unsung

It’s hard to imagine today, but throughout that era, King was known primarily as a blues singer. To most fans, his guitar work came second. The guitar was a back-bench instrument in those days: Guitar-playing bandleaders Chuck Berry and T-Bone Walker were the exception.

King crossed over to mainstream fame in the late 1960s, finally playing gigs to both white and Black audiences, recording albums and singles marketed, at last, to mainstream pop patrons. In 1969, he went on tour with the Rolling Stones. His first big mainstream hit, “The Thrill is Gone,” hit the radio that year.

Over the decades, King’s fame continued to grow. By the turn of the century, he was embraced as King of the Blues. In 2006, President George W. Bush awarded King the Presidential Medal of Freedom. By the time of his death, King had visited 90 countries and had performed more than 17,000 concerts.

"He wanted to make the blues a respectable genre that was acceptable around the world," said Sue King Evans, King's ex-wife and the love of his life. "He died loving his life and accomplishing his purpose."

And that is why B.B. King matters.

Daniel de Visé, a reporter for USA TODAY, is author of the 2022 Grove Atlantic book “King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: B.B. King at 100: Why the 'King of the Blues' still matters

Reporting by Daniel de Visé, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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