The Immersion Library

Some see a blues musician like a follow-the-dots painter. Like any fool can do it. But simplicity is deceptive. And feeling is something that’s not easy to evaluate. Lightnin’ Hopkins may not have known many notes, but he knew all the right ones, and he knew where to put ’em. Some genius with four Ph.D.s in music theory might never be able to do in a lifetime what Lightnin’ did in a minute – tell the truth.

I searched for any slight opening in the 10-foot chain-link fence surrouding King’s tour bus. Nothing. I weighed my Fender Stratocaster in my hands and with a certain reckless abandon decided that I could hurl the instrument over the fence. Then, when he’d come out with his band to board the bus, I’d holler and beg for him to sign it and have someone throw it back over the fence to me.

I had no other options. The security guards at the backstage entrance ignored the pleas of my sister and I. We shamelessly implored them to have a heart and provide an unforgettable experience to two young kids. We couldn’t find any discarded backstage passes anywhere on the littered floor of the amphitheater. But I would not be denied. The power of Koko Taylor, Buddy Guy and BB King had charged my ambition and purged me of any regard for decorum or dignity. After all, Buddy Guy was “so funky you could smell it” and BB King reigned over the stage like a god come down to his people.

Then, while gauging my launch angles to clear the fence, I heard my sister cry my name. I went running towards her and two wonderful women were holding out their backstage passes to us. They had been through to meet and greet the great King and were offering their passes to us. My dignity still absent, I thanked them profusely and ran back to the security guards and their rolling eyes. They simply opened the gate and waved us through. They abandoned the fight and rather chose to live to see another day. What were two more kids to BB King?

I will tell you what BB King was to two more kids.

He sat comfortably in a blueish-purple arm chair situated in a room full of grateful subjects – his smile radiating the same joy as greeting relatives at a long overdue family reunion. One young rocker wore white gloves laying his autographed guitar back into it’s hard-shell case. A man laughed while taking photos of people rushing next to BB, squatting down to capture the memory of a lifetime. The bare white walls seemed to cower in homage to a man from whose greatness they wouldn’t dare distract.

“Can I shake your hand?” I honestly don’t remember how he replied. I do remember smiling eyes and a large hand reaching out to me from his seat. I held it and noted the massive ring donning his finger. I don’t recall the grip, just this overwhelming sense of gentleness.

But down to business. “Will you please sign my guitar?” He did speak during these exchanges, his voice like amber hue and higher in its timbre than I expected. I simply can’t recall exactly what he said up to this point. Someone handed BB a marker and he signed his name on the body of my Strat. When he handed it back to me, a rush of comfort overtook me, an excited feeling of belonging or perhaps simply of relief. I would be leaving with a guitar emblazoned with BB King’s signature.

I found myself on the floor, kneeling next to his chair, asking if he really only played Lucille. Any world famous musician surely has dozens of instruments from which to choose from for any performance. He replied with a giggle, “No, no, no…I have an acoustic too.” Unreal. The others in line burst into laughter and I remember some looking at me with familial smiles as if grateful for my interaction with BB. Looking back, they must have relished the charismatic character of King which I had unknowingly displayed for their amusement.

“And what was it like recording with Eric Clapton?!?” I believe he was shaking someone else’s hand at this point and answered, “Oh, Eric? Yeah, he’s pretty cool.” Breathe. Don’t forget to breathe.

The photographer then leaned over and suggested we take a photo together. I stayed on one knee and leaned over BBs shoulder; my arm around the top of his armchair, our heads bending towards each other. My sister then walked up and asked, like I had, if she could shake his hand. “Girl, you can give me a hug ’round my neck if you want to!” My sister hugged BB King as if he were her granddaddy.

Imagine classical music; any kind of western academic system of music. I would argue that these composers and players “follow the dots” more than any great bluesman. Players quite literally follow notes on a page to perform a piece. Instead of glorifying the deceptive human element of music, the part less easy to evaluate, old western culture complicated the dots. This way, no one could argue the supremacy of their craft and their monopoly over the idea of “real music”. Futhermore, perhaps this can also represent our tendency to follow more and more complicated dots in evaluating our world and universe leaving no room for spirit or anything we can’t quantify. BB King and those like him can argue that supremacy and challenge us to glorify the kindred spirit and shared human experience of all people, not only those playing “real music” on high.

I’ve read this autobiography, met the man himself, and I still can’t quantify BB King – nor can this book. He airs all his flaws, all his passions, all his ambitions, all his joys and weaknesses, leaving us with a familiarity of a man; a man glorified in the annals of American music but still a man – something complex, deceptive, not so easy to evaluate.

When BB died, I did not feel as though a hole had been left in American music or that a hole had been left in the world or our culture. He has left these holes and one can see them, hear them and understand them. But one does not feel these holes. Rather, I felt in my stomach that pit left from a personal loss. Something closer, perhaps less grand when viewed from the outside, but irreplaceable and more valuable then any quantification of how well one follows dots.

BB changed the world. Yes, perhaps in a cultural and historic sense, but for the first time, I valued someone of that accomplishment and magnitude not because he changed the world, but because he changed me.

I feel blessed to be part of the change – even if it’s only for a single afternoon, even if it lasts only as long as it takes the shimmering sun to melt into the dark Mississippi soil.