This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star

and the American people. Up next, the story

of a man who came up out of the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta and into the bright lights

of the stage worldwide. We're of course telling the story of the chairman of the board himself,

B.B. King, whose unique style of guitar playing and voice

changed the music industry forever.

Here to tell the story is Daniel Davy Say,

author of The King of the Blues.

Take it away, Daniel.

Let's start with a proposition that B.B. King is the one superstar of the blues.

There are arguably equally great figures in the blues, maybe Muddy Waters is one, maybe

possibly Robert Johnson is one, although B.B. would disagree with that.

But he's certainly the one superstar of the blues, and I say this because he toured like

90 countries and, you know,

at all these Grammys and sold massive numbers of records. He's much bigger than any other blues

artist ever was. That's the starting point. But I would argue that why he matters is not just that,

not just the fact that he may have played more concerts, which is close to 20,000

than any other major musical artist ever.

I don't think anybody comes close.

Even that isn't why he matters.

...