Review by Booklist Review
In this first authoritative biography, De Visé chronicles the life of the bluesman who became king. Born Riley King in dirt-poor Mississippi, King's early life was less than regal. He barely knew his father, lost his mother at a young age, and worked picking cotton. As for many a future performer, music saved his life. Cousin to bluesman Bukka White, King would learn how to play the guitar in his own singular style on a Gibson that he lovingly called Lucille (readers will learn why). As De Visé notes, King's story is also the story of the Great Migration, as millions of African Americans journeyed from the South to the so-called Promised Land, although instead of settling down in one city, King would "visit all, over and over again, for the rest of his life." In Memphis, his first big town, King played gigs and performed on the city's Black radio station and went on to pay his dues over and over again on his way to becoming a household name. De Visé tells King's story in the context of his swirling times, intertwined with profiles of historic people and events musical and otherwise. A fine portrait of an iconic musician.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist De Vise (The Comeback) amply demonstrates his masterful storytelling and research skills in this definitive look at legendary blues musician B.B. King (1925--2015). Informed by his conversations with "dozens of surviving friends and relatives, bandmates and producers," De Vise provides an intimate portrait of a cultural luminary "whose achievements transcended his genre." Born into poverty on a Mississippi plantation in 1925, King fell in love with music at a young age, when the reverend of his church taught him the three guitar chords at the center of every blues song he would ever perform. In 1946, he left his life as a sharecropper and tractor driver to perform in Memphis, where he became a regional star before signing with a talent agent and touring internationally for more than 50 years. But even after finding fame, De Vise recounts, King endured his fair share of trials, including a fatal accident involving his tour bus that killed a truck driver, and money disputes with his business manager. These hardships, however, only serve to underscore the tenacity that led King to become "the greatest living guitarist" alive and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Even readers who aren't fans of the blues will be engrossed by this nuanced look at an American icon. Agent: Deborah Grosvenor, Grosvenor Literary Agency. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist de Visé (Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show) has written the definitive biography of blues master Riley "B. B." King (1925--2015). Drawing material from King's autobiography, Blues All Around Me; Charles Sawyer's The Arrival of B. B. King: The Authorized Biography; and dozens of interviews, he begins with his subject's impoverished childhood in Mississippi and his backbreaking work as a young tenant farmer. The author identifies King's musical influences (blues guitarists Lonnie Johnson and T-Bone Walker; French guitarist Django Reinhardt) and details his stint at the Memphis radio station WDIA and his signing with Modern Records, which catapulted him onto the R&B charts. The book covers King's crossover popularity with white audiences, his rise to international fame during the late 1960s, his decline a decade later, and his subsequent resurgence. Though de Visé ploughs through a seemingly endless series of King's records, performances, love affairs, and gambling-induced IRS troubles, the narrative remains engaging. The book expertly interweaves King's music career into the U.S. social fabric, especially the civil rights movement. VERDICT With this fast-moving, informative, evenhanded, and exhaustive biography, de Visé vividly captures King's life.--David P. Szatmary, formerly at Univ. of Washington, Seattle
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
As blues royalty and one of the 20th century's most influential musicians, B.B. King (1925-2015) has long deserved a well-considered biography that places his achievements in a cultural and historical context. This is it. Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist de Visé deftly interweaves tales of American history, pop culture, racial relations, music theory, and much more to fully demonstrate King's significance. Not only does the author show King at his highest moments--winning multiple Grammys and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, recording his most-acclaimed albums, opening the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in his hometown of Indianola, Mississippi--but also his lowest, including his final days, when he was bedridden and suffering from complications of his chronic diabetes. It's a magnificent tale that de Visé reconstructs mostly in King's own words, culled from his memoir and the hundreds of interviews he gave throughout his career. However, it is often when the author writes as an outsider about King's life that the most poignant revelations come. Though King famously cultivated the belief that he had fathered 15 children, he was believed to be sterile. Almost as famously, King would rarely address racial injustice even though it affected him and his career deeply. De Visé, who lays out one indignity after another for King and his band because they were Black, wonders if "King's anger remained deep inside, concealed behind the expressive eyes and the ancient stutter, where perhaps it had always lived." As King himself once wrote, "Moving on is my method of healing my hurt and, man, I've been moving on all my life." What de Visé does best, though, is assess the musical magic that King and his beloved guitar, Lucille, made and how their unique sound combination influenced blues and rock stars for generations. The thrill is here, as B.B. King finally gets his due in this first meticulous account of his historic life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
