How B.B. King's Guitar "Lucille" Got Her Name

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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. But perhaps the most famous nickname for a guitar is what B.B. King named his Gibson ES-355 and that is Lucille. Up next the story of how that guitar got its name. Here to start us off is B.B. King's longtime friend Myron Johnson, followed by Daniel Davisse, author of The King of the Blues. Let's get into the story.

Oh 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 where they started but very consistent with that and that. B.B. was doing a performing at a juke joint. Sort of a off the books joint in the black community. In Twist, Arkansas. Which is named for a white family called Twist.

There's probably a sharecropping community. And doing his performance while he was on stage these two guys ended up finding out that they were romancing the same woman. A 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 like like you would see a big oil barrel nowadays and they would fill it up with kerosene and and wood and 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 tussling and wrestling. And they knock over a kerosene lamp and it starts a fire and 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 flat a wave of fire coming at you and it set the place on fire. Well BB like everybody else jumped up and commenced the running getting the hell out of there and trying to save his life trying not to get burnt up and because the place I mean these place were were shanties I mean it wasn't much to them they went up like a cinderbox you know it was not much to them so it went to place became engulfed in flames and everybody headed for the exit along with BB and he got outside and realized that in his haste to protect his butt that he had left his his guitar on the stage. BB King rushes in to 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 he was like my guitar he turned around and ran back inside and he got it but before he could get out the place collapsed around him and he was he had some severe burns from that and he showed he showed me the scars before he died and 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 he came close to losing his life that night but that was the that's the gist of that story that's how that came about.

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 but 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 I said was it was Lucille a thing? Yes yes I guess she was I guess that BB King called his guitar Lucille and was calling for 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 one he has a record coming out that's called Lucille and a song wherein he tells her story. The original Lucille that was left in the fire that 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. This 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 he well he put his guitar he put the Lucille in the trunk of the car and back in that day you had like for for example GMC General Motors would make a car where they would might make 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 spend time with his friends come out someone had keyed the the trunk and taken Lucille and you know to this day don't know who took her where she is if she even exists at this point but BB had a number of guitars between the fire and the time he passed and if BB was playing them he named them 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.

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