It was a rainy day in May, 10 years ago, when B.B. King made his last trip down Beale Street. His fame was great enough by then that the funeral procession was captured by PBS’ American Masters series, which still features the footage online. Rodd Bland, son of another Beale Street star, Bobby “Blue” Bland, walked along with King’s beloved guitar, Lucille, cradled in his arms, all to the joyous wail of the Mighty Souls Brass Band, as the hearse rolled slowly under the neon sign of B.B. King’s Blues Club and on down the street where young Riley B. King had once arrived seeking his fortune.
Having found that fortune after many hardships, then passing away at the ripe age of 89, King was now making that journey again in reverse. Leaving Beale, the funeral procession headed south. At the state line, police ceremonially transferred guardianship of the motorcade from Tennessee to Mississippi officers, and on they drove to Indianola. Though he was born in the country, closer to Itta Bena, he spent his teen years in Indianola and often called that his hometown. When King died in 2015 it had already been 10 years since the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center’s groundbreaking there. By day’s end, he would be buried on those grounds.
That day of mourning and celebration thus honored two pole stars of King’s life: the town where he grew up, and the town where his artistic voice was born. And now, a century after his birth and 10 years since his death, both cities are celebrating his legacy in style.
100 Days of Blues
The festivities have already been going on around Indianola, with Mississippi Valley State University (in nearby Itta Bena) having hosted the 11th annual B.B. King Day of panel discussions on September 4th, followed by an all-star jam session at Club Ebony, where B.B. often played. This Saturday, September 13th, the venue will come to life again in spectacular fashion, as a live blues band accompanies a hologram of King. And on his actual birthday, September 16th, the museum will host a reception (and serve birthday cake). Meanwhile, the Bluff City has been celebrating since June 8th, which marked the launch of “100 Days of Blues” in venues all over town.
As Kevin Kane, president and CEO of Memphis Tourism, describes it, “We kicked it off with a big gospel brunch with the Tennessee Mass Choir at B.B. King’s Blues Club on a Sunday. And that was just huge. And then we are wrapping it up on Tuesday, September 16th, with a big celebration being led by B.B. King’s Blues Club, where they will be having music most of that day. So it’s been really a cool promotion. We just thought it would be a great way to get a conversation going, once again, about our musical legacy, and it certainly did that. Our stories were picked up literally all over the world, so it really kind of exceeded our expectations from that standpoint.”
The ongoing salutes to King go beyond performances. Through October 19th, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music is hosting the exhibit, “B.B. King in Memphis,” featuring never-before-seen photographs from King’s 1982 Labor Day Weekend concert at Mud Island Amphitheater, captured by Memphis photographer Alan Copeland. And the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery has unearthed some rare shots of King by Ernest C. Withers himself, featured in a dedicated exhibit.
Perhaps only in Memphis could one find something blues-related happening for 100 consecutive days. “The calendar was not that hard to fill,” says Kane, “because there is so much music in this area that we literally could find something every day for 100 days. A lot of destinations would really struggle [to find that many blues acts], but we were able to find something literally, I think, every single day.”
That’s no great surprise with a street like Beale in our midst, and naturally that’s where the party will be, with the club founded by King and local investor Tommy Peters at the heart of two days of activities. Peters, who died almost exactly four years ago due to complications from Covid-19, was a beloved figure on Beale and throughout Memphis, and the club he founded with King was one reason why. There was a deep personal bond between Peters and King that still reverberates through the city today as their shared legacy.
When Sara Fay Egan, Peters’ daughter, was growing up, B.B. King loomed large in her life. “I met him several times,” she recalls. “He came over to our house, and he and my dad were pretty close. They were both really, really hard-working. B.B., I think, was on the road more than 300 nights a year. He worked so hard, and my father worked so hard. They really bonded over their work ethic, their love for music, and their love for family. That’s what we’re really trying to home in on and continue.”
Their shared love of music will certainly be apparent on Beale this weekend and into next week, as B.B. King’s Blues Club hosts twin events to honor a century of its namesake’s impact. “On September 14th, we are having a free block party on Beale Street from 2 to 6 p.m.,” says Egan. “We really just wanted to get families down there, kids of all ages, to celebrate and learn a little bit about this wonderful history of the blues and what B.B. accomplished. And so playing music that day, we’ll have Eric Gales, who’s a Memphian, Rodd Bland, Mr. Sipp, Corey Lou, and the Stax Music Academy group. We love getting the kids involved, and really just want it to be a big birthday party. We’ll have face painters, balloon artists, the Whitehaven High School marching band, the Beale Street Flippers, and the Memphis Grizzline drum line.”
The club is also taking the extra step of moving their food service outside, hoping that locals will rediscover the magic of Beale. “I think that a lot of Memphians forget what’s right here in their backyard,” says Egan, “and we want them to come down and maybe do something they wouldn’t normally do: Go to Beale Street on a Sunday. It’s safe, bring your kids, and it’ll be fun. And the weather looks to be perfect. We’re going to have tents down the street and be selling food. And we’ve encouraged the other restaurants to do the same. We’ll have barbecue sandwiches, so people can eat outside, enjoying the weather, or if they want to come inside they can do that as well.”
Then on Tuesday, September 16th, as the sun begins to sink in the sky, B.B. King’s Blues Club will light up as if it’s New Year’s Eve, with a mini music festival of sorts. “It will be a seated dinner with a three-course meal, and as you dine you can watch the show,” Egan says. “David Porter, who needs no introduction, will be emceeing and hosting. And the bill includes Bobby Rush, Eric Gales, Carla Thomas, Jerome Chism with Hi Rhythm, Boo Mitchell, Southern Avenue, and D.K. Harrell.”
Even that partial listing is a jaw-dropper, offering some of the most stellar heirs, across three generations, of King’s legacy as both a singer and a guitarist. Rush, of course, is blues royalty and has won multiple Grammys in the field, while Gales’ 2022 album with Joe Bonamassa also garnered a Grammy nomination. Mitchell, Chism, and Hi Rhythm have been wowing audiences globally on several recent tours, with guitar wunderkind Lina Beach filling Teenie Hodges’ shoes admirably, and Carla Thomas’ cameo with that very group was a raucous, soulful highlight of the 2024 RiverBeat Music Festival. She’s recently appeared on the road with the group in Europe as the Take Me to the River All-Stars. Meanwhile, Southern Avenue will fit right in with the family vibes Egan mentioned, Family being the title of their latest and greatest album on Alligator Records.
Their Fathers’ Daughters
But yet another performer that night will take the cake in putting family front and center, or rather families, plural. That would be Shirley King, raised in B.B.’s father’s household in Memphis during the earliest years of B.B.’s career, as he toured the Chitlin’ Circuit. “My father bought that house after he made his first hit, ‘3 O’Clock Blues.’ He bought that house because he was always looking out for his father,” Shirley says. “It’s still there, at 2031 Hubert Avenue.” She is also unique among those B.B. counted as his children in having pursued the performing arts. “I’ve been doing this for 53 years,” Shirley says. “I danced for 21 years, and the other 32 I’ve just been singing blues and touring and doing my thing.”
When she moved to Chicago early in life, her father helped her connect with Willie Dixon (whose daughter became a good friend of Shirley’s). Yet there was a downside to her career as a show dancer: Shirley was often too busy with her own shows to see her father play as often as she wanted. “I don’t know too many kids of legendary people, but most of them cannot say they were out there performing on one side of the street while their father was performing on the other one,” she says.
Still, it’s been a minute since Shirley took the stage. After releasing her third album, Blues for a King, in 2020, Covid brought an abrupt hiatus to her performing career. Next Tuesday’s birthday concert will be one of her first appearances since then. “I have not done anything since 2020, I think, except for a couple things in 2023,” she says. “But this will be the first time that I’ve done any kind of B.B. King celebration.” Indeed, Shirley has always aimed to make a name for herself on her own merits, without leaning on her father’s name. But now, she says, “It’s an honor, the feeling I get from it. I want to do something my dad could be proud of.”
She’s used to having stellar players, her 2020 album boasting cameos by the likes of Duke Robillard, Elvin Bishop, and Steve Cropper. Having the B.B. King’s Blues Club All Stars backing her next week will be in keeping with that standard of excellence. Any father would surely be proud.
Yet another father’s pride will be beaming as well, as Sara Fay Egan well knows. “Back in the ’90s, the city came to John Elkington and my father, Tommy Peters, because Beale Street was really kind of rundown. There wasn’t much open. And so they came to Tommy to open B.B. King’s and help bring back Beale Street. And when it opened in ’91 it really became an anchor of the street. So this birthday is a reflection of both my father’s legacy and B.B. King’s legacy. Looking to the future, I feel like we’re at a crossroads again with Beale Street and Downtown.”
And at this crossroads, two heirs of those twin legacies will meet, as the daughter of Tommy Peters welcomes the daughter of B.B. King to the stage. Egan is relishing the opportunity, saying she and Shirley recall meeting “when we were really young. We remember being on his bus. And then when I was in college, I was on his bus again. So it’s kind of a full-circle moment now. B.B. was such a family man. He really took great care of his family, and he always had family members around. And there will be some other family members there on Tuesday as well. But Shirley will be singing. You don’t want to hear me singing, okay? She’s performing, and I’m putting on the party. We’ve been talking every day. I think we spoke for 45 minutes last night. She’s just so excited that we’re celebrating him in the way that he deserves.”
“She’s a beautiful child,” Shirley says of Egan, her junior by a few decades. “I see her dad in her. And we want to honor both fathers, the father that made this thing real, and the father that they accepted. You know, that was a partnership, right there.”