Blues legend B.B. King preps for tour, new album

JACKSON, Miss. — B.B. King is afraid.

“Trying to come on stage after Etta James is frightening,” King joked during a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press.

King will embark on a 16-city summer blues festival tour July 24 with James and Al Green, who King says is equally as “frightening” to follow.

“I know both of them, they are really fiery on stage,” King said.

At 81, King isn’t slowing down.

The guitar legend recently made his annual visit to his hometown of Indianola, Miss., for the aptly titled “B.B. King Homecoming Festival.”

“It is something that I have been doing for 42 years, playing free for the kids in June,” King said. “Watching them grow.”

King was born on a plantation in Itta Bena near Indianola. Growing up, the blues icon said no one famous ever came to town to play music for the children.

“I wanted to let them know that if B.B. King can do it, they can do it better,” he said.

On July 28, King will attend the Eric Clapton-sponsored Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago. Proceeds from the event, which brings together guitarists from Willie Nelson and B.B. King to John Mayer and Sheryl Crow, will go to The Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a treatment and education facility founded by Clapton for chemically dependent persons.

After that, King heads back into the studio to record his follow-up to “80,” which won him a 14th Grammy Award in 2006. He will be working with Grammy Award-winning producer T-Bone Burnett on the untitled CD, due out in the first quarter of 2008.

“We just hope we can come up with something that is good, different and better than I’ve done before,” King said.

King took a break from music while in Indianola to visit the site of the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, now under construction in Indianola near the cotton gin where King once worked.

The $14 million museum is scheduled to open on King’s birthday — Sept. 16 — in 2008.
“It does carry my name and we’re hoping that it will do a lot for the Delta and a lot as far as education is concerned,” King said.

Museum executive director Connie Gibbons said oral histories have been collected from King and others to be used in short films to be shown throughout the exhibit. There are also several computer interactive elements planned for the exhibit.

The Delta Regional Authority (DRA) has announced that it would provide $256,500 toward construction of the center.

The DRA, created by Congress in 2000, funds economic development programs in Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee.

The Economic Development Administration will provide another $1 million for the project.
In January, Jim and Donna Barksdale issued a $2.5 million challenge grant for the museum.
The state of Mississippi has provided $2 million for the center.

A statue of King now resides in B.B. King Park, along a corridor that will lead patrons to the museum. King said he “approves highly” of the statue’s likeness.

“Kiddies get a chance to come by and take a look at it. I’m really proud of it,” King said.

(Associated Press)