BB King

Apparently, once you’ve put in more than fifty years of the touring grind as a musician and have earned yourself a reputation as the King of the Blues Worldwide, as the posters and t-shirts the bitter man at the souvenir stall was selling as fast he can proclaimed, your nightly show can cease to be so much a performance of your music itself, and can become a sort of homage to yourself, a royal visitation in which the King can appear to the faithful and distribute gifts and benedictions. That was the sense when BB King, now 86 years old and in his sixth decade of performing, appeared with his band last month in Spokane. King has no opening act. He needs no opening act; his band is its own warm-up act, coming out onto a fully lit stage without its leader to thunderous cheers from the audience and, after acknowledging the enthusiastically middle-aged crowd, launching into a loud, brassy blues jam that lasts nearer ten minutes than five. Even as the opening number moves from one solo to another, the mood is of an overture to something grand, like royal trumpeters whipping the masses into an appropriately reverential frenzy before the curtains open and the God-King comes forth to bask in their adulation. And of course he does, to a standing ovation; the King, hobbled by age and diabetes, takes a shoulder from his lead saxophonist, who helps him to his chair at the front of the stage and rests his famous guitar in his lap. BB smiles, waves, tosses unused picks from his coat into the front rows, and the show itself begins.

For all the fuss about his mastery of the blues guitar, the King does not actually play very much. He solos occasionally, throws the odd note in when the mood strikes him, and takes fewer leads than you might expect. The majority of the guitar work is carried by his perfectly capable lead guitarist, a perfectly benevolent seeming fellow nearly as old as the king and, to hear BB tell it, a sort of Chief Advisor who has been with the band nearly as long as there’s been a band. Indeed, this seems to be the way of most of the band members, who are largely old bluesmen in natty suits of the sort who look like they could tell any number of interestingly off-colour stories if you bought them a drink. The only exception is the drummer, who looks to be in his early thirties and takes a remarkable amount of flak from the King for his perceived inadequacies. BB mutters repeatedly about how he’s gonna have to cut somebody in the rhythm section, and it’s hard to tell if it’s part of the show or genuine annoyance. Everyone on stage seems to have a good time regardless. I incline towards being part of the show.

As the set progresses, it becomes clear that this only secondarily a chance to see BB King perform. This is an audience, a chance to be in the King’s presence as he has a good time with some old friends on stage. Sometimes he sings, and when he does he has what can only be described as pipes. He bellows the words with all the melody and enthusiasm of a man a third or a quarter of his age, throwing himself into them with the abandon and involvement that makes the blues such personal music. Between lyrics, he spends his time dancing in his seat, a gag he goes back to at least eight times, with no noticable diminishment in the audience’s delighted reaction. He’s having a great time, and when he’s having a good time, he talks. Sometimes he talks to the band, swapping inside jokes away from the microphone and leaving everyone on stage in respectful stitches while those of us out of earshot wonder what we missed. More often he tells us all stories while the band plays away behind him. Most of them must be made up, probably on the spot; his narratives ramble amiably around, distracted easily by a bum note or a shout from the crowd only to return to the thread five minutes later. He weaves five or six song snippets into a long fable of advice for us men, teaching us how to keep our ladies happy after we do something wrong. Even at 86, the King still loves his ladies. Every so often one of his stories will get entirely stuck as he starts ruminating on just how lovely ladies are, both in general and in many specific cases he could mention if he had more time. Usually he snickers to himself at some unspeakable memory at this point, as if to say wink wink nudge nudge know what I’m saying? At other times, of course, this being the blues, he has things to say about the ladies which are not so nice, but not even his holler of “Don’t EVER Trust A Woman!” can ruin the mood for the happily romantic couple in the next row up. Eventually he wanders off into a somewhat leering, dirty story about how he helped some lovely young lady’s marriage simply by taking too much of a certain blue medicine and then bringing his considerable mojo into the bar to meet her. Blues king or no, he’s still something of a dirty old man at heart. He must have been a terror fifty years ago.

Eventually the audience ends, with his trademark “The Thrill Is Gone,” and then the band whips up into worship band mode again, and now the King is really and truly holding court on the stage. Fans from all over the theater rush to the stage, waving posters, records, shirts, all manner of memorabilia for him to touch, look at, sign. They pass them up to the lead sax player, who passes them to the King himself, who signs them, makes eye contact with the source, winks, smiles, exudes affability from his throne. He throws more and more picks into the crowd, who are still shouting and cheering wildly, thrilled o be this close to the presence. Finally, when the proper time comes, another helper brings the King’s vast, gold-embroidered overcoat out from the wings, and as someone helps him stand two of the assistants help him into his robes. He waves a few more times to masses, signs one last poster, and then, with two men supporting him, he makes his slow way off the stage.

From my perspective at the far side of the stage, I see what I’m not supposed to. As soon as they have him safely out of view, the assistants decant the King into a wheelchair, and roll him off to wherever it is that the King spends his private time. This doesn’t do anything to kill the worshipful mood. A true king doesn’t have to walk if he doesn’t want to. He has people who do that for him, and he’ll keep coming out onto the stage, with all the help he needs, until he can’t hold the guitar at all, or even boogie in his chair.