Born Riley B. King near Indianola, Mississippi in 1925, B.B. king has become one of the great names in blues, developing a style and sound that would echo through decades of blues and rock recordings and performances. Like many contemporaries, he sang in gospel choirs as a child, and got his first guitar when he was 12. he followed his cousin Bukka White to Memphis in 1946, and over the next xouple of years got work singing and as a radio DJ under the name of "Beale Street Blues Boy", later abbreviated to B.B.. He met T.Bone Walker and Sonny Boy Williamson, and started to develop his own style as he got more work in clubs and on radio around memphis. he made his first recordings in 1949 for Bullet in Nashville, and then for L.A.-based RPM, assembling his own touring band. Through the '50s his reputation and success gradually grew, with a string of R&B hits and an increasingly extensive touring schedule. In 1962 he signed to ABC Paramount Records, and for them recorded the classic "The Thrill Is Gone". By this time the folk/blues revival was well under way on both sides of the Atlantic, and a generation of budding blues and rock guitarists imitated King's distinctive sound, based on string-bending, sustain and vibrato. By the '70s he had become the elder statesman of the blues, his superstar aficionadoes keen to play and record with him, and he has spent the last 30 years maintaining a punishing concert schedule, returning to the UK in 2009 despite having done a farewell tour in 2006. He rightly remains perhaps the most revered and respected living blues artist. Acrobat has on catalogue a 'live' album by B.B. King -  for details click here.