Library Rock's Backpages

B.B. King: Thirty years on the road

John Swenson, Rolling Stone, 21 February 1980

LOS ANGELES — B.B. King sat quietly in the American Bandstand dressing room, sipping a diet soda and staring at the words to a song from his latest album, Take It Home. The record had been selling so well that King was asked to appear on the show, but the fifty-four-year-old blues singer won't lip-sync, and thus broke Bandstand's canned-music routine, one of the few times in the show's twenty-seven-year history. King, who'd celebrated his thirtieth anniversary as a recording artist the night before, was concerned about upsetting the clockwork Bandstand mechanism.

Total word count of piece: 945

Subscribe

Becoming a member is easy. Membership gives you access to all the thousands of articles in the library.

Click here to go to Subscribe page.

Click here for academic and other group subscriptions.