B.B. King
Riley B. King was born on September 16, 1925, on the Berclair cotton plantation near the town of Itta Bena, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers Albert and Nora Ella King. He considered the nearby city of Indianola, Mississippi to be his home. When King was four years old, his mother left his father for another man, so he was raised by his maternal grandmother, Elnora Farr, in Kilmichael, Mississippi.
Bnois King
King was born January 21, 1943, in Delhi, Louisiana, a small town thirty miles east of Monroe, Louisiana. He had seven brothers and two sisters. King started playing guitar at the early age of eight when he found an unused guitar in his grandmother's closet and started picking out notes. He attended Boley High School, which lacked a music teacher until his final year there. Up until then, the few songs he could play he played by ear. While still in high school, James Moody, the owner and bandleader of a 20-piece big band out of New Orleans (called "The New Sounds"), took him under his wing and gave him his first paying gig, for which King made $15. Once King realized he could make money playing guitar on stage is when he reports "...I really got serious" about playing guitar."