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Okay, so This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, Go to the iHeartRadio app. to Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Neil Young has old black. Willie Nelson has trigger.
and Elvis Presley had the dove. or perhaps the most famous nickname for a guitar. is what B. B. King named his Gibson E.
S. 355. And that is Lucille. Up next, the story of how that guitar got its name. Here to start us off is BB King's longtime friend Myron Johnson, followed by Daniel DeVise.
Author of The King of the Blues. Let's get into the story. Uh Well, that story's been repeated and told and I'm amazed that it's remained consistent as it has over the years because, you know, you can start a conversation at one end and after it passes through four or five people, it comes out on the other end completely different than what it started, but very consistent with that. BB was doing a performing at a juke joint.
Sort of an off-the-books joint in the black community. In Twist, Arkansas. Which is named for a white family called Twist. There was probably a sharecropping community. And during this performance, while he was on stage, these two guys ended up finding out that they were romancing the same woman.
The beautiful. server in this in this juke joint. And they got into a fight over this woman. And back in the day, juke joints ran year-round. and during the cold cold months, winter time they would take a big barrel.
Like you would see a big oil barrel nowadays, and they would fill it up with kerosene. And wood. and uh they would light that and set it on fire, put that up in the middle of the room and it would radiate with the people mingling around and what have you, it would radiate the heat coming off of that.
Well, these two guys got into a fight. And uh tussling and wrestling and uh They knock over a kerosene lamp and it starts a fire, and the kerosene just flew across the floor. and the fire went with it on top of that kerosene and it just looked like a wave of fire coming at you and it set the place on fire.
Well, uh, BB like everybody else. Yeah. jumped up and commenced a running, getting the hell out of there. and trying to save his life, trying not to get burned up. And because the place, I mean, these places were shanties.
I mean, it wasn't much to them. They went up like a cinder box. You know, it was not much to them, so it went to the place and became engulfed in flames, and everybody headed for the exit along with BB. And uh he got outside and realized that in his haste to uh uh protect his butt that he had left his uh his guitar on the stage. BB King rushes in.
Get his guitar so it doesn't burn up because he can't afford to buy another one. You know, times were hard, guitars and money was hard to come by. And uh he was like, uh my guitar. Um He turned around and ran back inside. And he got it, but before he could get out, the place collapsed around him.
And uh he was uh he had some severe burns uh from that uh And uh he showed he showed me the scars uh before he died and uh he he got burned pretty good. And as I guess as he's cradling his smoking guitar outside of The Burning remains of the juke joint, he hears somebody say, Oh man, that Lucille, she started the whole thing. And he decided to name his guitar Lucille. to remind him of that moment and as he put it to never do anything that stupid again. Because the guitar, as important as it was to him, it wasn't worth his life.
And uh he came close to losing his life that night. But uh that was the that's the gist of that story. That's how that came about. Yeah. And we don't really know when it happened.
I think some of the official accounts say it was in 1949. Others say it was 1950. There's a marker in Twist, Arkansas, which I think says it was in the early 50s. You don't see a mention of Lucille anywhere in print. and I swear this to you, until 1967.
Which made me wonder: wait, did they brand Lucille in 1967? Did they create the name then? You know, which wouldn't have surprised me.
So I went back and asked. Sue, his ex-wife, and people who played with him in like 1949, 1950, 1951, said, was Lucille a thing? Yes, yes, I guess she was. I guess that B.B. King called his guitar Lucille and was calling her Lucille by about 1950.
This, according to people who actually were playing with him in 1950. And it was just an inside thing, an inside joke, if you will. Lucille's identity wasn't known outside of Mr. King's inner circle until he starts talking about her. First, with the black press, then with the white press in 1967.
This is when he has a record coming out that's called Lucille and a song wherein he tells her story. Yeah. The original Lucille that was left in the fire, that guitar was stolen years ago, many years ago. As he put it, he was after the fire. He was going to visit a friend.
I don't know this is it was a lady friend or a guy friend. All he said told me was that he was going by to visit a friend. And back in that day, well he put his guitar, he put the Lucille in the trunk of the car. And back in that day you had uh like for for s for example, GMC, General Motors, would make a car.
Well, they would might might make uh different model cars, but the the key to the trunk was generic and fit every model that they made.
So he left the guitar in the trunk and went in to uh spend time with his friends. Uh come out.
Someone had key the uh the trunk and uh taken Lucille and um you know to this day I don't know who took her, where she is, or if she even exists at this point, but Bibi had a number of guitars between the fire and the time he passed. And if BB was playing them, he named him Lucille. Every guitar he ever played after that, he named Lucille. The story of how Lucille came to be, that is the name of BB King's guitar. This is Our American Stories More after these messages.
This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we tell stories of history, faith, business, love, loss, and your stories. Send us your stories, small or large, to our email, oas at ouramericanstories.com. That's oas at ouramericanstories.com. We'd love to hear them and put them on the air.
Our audience loves them too. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint.
It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. At CVS, it matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it.
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