Monday 15 October 2012

BB on film

The Life of Riley, a film about the life of bluesman BB King, is being released today.

Born in 1925 in Indianola, Mississippi, King whose real name is Riley B. (BB comes from Blues Boy, his nickname as a young radio performer in Memphis in the late forties) is the last survivor of the generation of musicians including Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf who quit sharecropping in the Delta, moved to the big city and electrified the blues, ultimately revolutionising popular music in the process.

The reviews of the film, such as this one by Ed Vulliamy in last week's Observer, have all been pretty positive and I'm looking forward to seeing it. Hopefully it will be up there with No Direction Home, director Martin Scorsese's masterful overview of the life and career of Bob Dylan.

No comments:

Post a Comment