{"id":22095,"date":"2021-12-16T05:30:32","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T10:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22095"},"modified":"2021-12-17T08:01:19","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T13:01:19","slug":"the-kings-daughter-shirley-king-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/16\/the-kings-daughter-shirley-king-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The King’s Daughter: Shirley King (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"Her father went on to tell her how he first learned of her participation in The Human Tornado<\/i>. \u201cHis band members were watching it, and he heard them laughing and howling,\u201d Shirley says. \u201cHe came off the back of the bus: \u2018What’s going on out here? What y’all laughing about?\u2019\u201d Once he saw the action onscreen, he sat down and watched along with the other musicians. \u201cAfter that,\u201d Shirley says with a laugh, \u201cEvery time I looked around, my dad was like, \u2018I done lost that movie. Could you give me another copy?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

King says that it was a joy to have taken part in something that gave her father such pleasure. And he would kid her that she had achieved something he had not. \u201cHe would say, \u2018Well, I<\/i> haven’t been on a motion movie!\u2019\u201d Shirley says. And right after that, they put him in the Blues Brothers movies two different times.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the end of the \u201880s King felt pressure from her church, so she stopped dancing and took a job selling scriptures on cassette tapes to make ends meet. She recalls a conversation with her father. \u201cHe had given me some money, and he said, \u2018Honey, how’s your Bible tape selling going on? How’s that business?\u2019 And I just looked at him with one of them little pitiful looks and told him: \u2018It’s not working, Daddy. Not one person in the church bought a talking Bible tape. Not one!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

So in addition to the money, B.B. King gave his daughter some advice. \u201cHoney, if you\u2019re in church, and they\u2019re telling you not to do what you do best that’s making you some money, then you’re not in the right place. As an entertainer, you do what you have to do to make money. That don’t make you a bad person. I believe in God, but I’m doing what it takes to take care of you guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hearing those words, Shirley King made a decision. \u201cI realized, \u2018I don’t want to get a day job,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cBecause that would have been what I would have to do next. I said, \u2018Since I’m already in the business, I’m going to go and check the blues now.\u2019\u201d So she began paying attention to the Chicago blues scene, hoping to break in as a singer. \u201cI started going around watching all the blues artists, including Koko Taylor,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Most of the entertainers she met knew that she was B.B. King\u2019s daughter, but that didn\u2019t get her far. \u201cNobody would let me sit in,\u201d she says. \u201cThey knew I was a dancer, but that didn’t mean I was supposed to be a singer. So I stopped begging, because that’s what they started telling me: \u2018You got to wait your turn. There’s other people in line that was here before you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It was three-time Grammy Award nominee Billy Branch who offered King her first real encouragement with regard to her goal of becoming a blues singer. \u201cYou got the greatest blues father in the world. You need to be out here trying to sing some blues,\u201d King recalls him telling her. \u201cAnd I was thinking to myself, \u2018Billy, I’m trying to do that. But won’t nobody let me on the stage!\u2019 So Billy started letting me come to all his shows and sit in with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, King worked up the courage to ask to be let onstage at Chicago\u2019s famed blues club Kingston Mines. But she wasn\u2019t as prepared for the opportunity as she could have been. \u201cThe young lady called me to sit in,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThis place was so crowded you couldn’t even see up there; both sides was crowded. I was so excited, I forgot I didn’t know no blues songs! I would want to do \u2018Got My Mojo Workin\u2019 but I didn’t know the words to it, so all I could sing was \u2018Got My Mojo Workin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

So on the spur of the moment, King decided to draw upon her previous performing experience. \u201cI saw the owner at the front table,\u201d she says. \u201cHe was sitting right there staring at me. I just stopped singing and started doing the shake dance on his stage. And he was looking at me all strange. I ran over there and pushed the table away, jumped in his lap and just started shaking in his seat!\u201d King says that the crowd went wild. \u201cEverybody in that place went to clapping, and they gave me a standing ovation. Because I put on a show that night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps improbably, King\u2019s spontaneous performance would earn her a regular gig at Kingston Mines. \u201cIn three weeks to a month, I was working there,\u201d she says. \u201cI didn’t have no car, so I would get on the bus every night and ride all the way from the south side to Kingston Mines.\u201d She admits that she still<\/i> didn’t know many blues songs, but she was learning as she went along. \u201cI would go in there every night and sing, leave with no voice, get on the bus and ride back to the south side. And I kept doing that. And after a while I started learning songs. And she made dancing part of her act, because the audiences responded well when she did.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really flashy when I started singing the blues,\u201d King says. \u201cI had just left off the circuit dancing, so I still had the \u2018boom bam\u2019 body. Once you see something work, you do that,\u201d she explains. \u201cI started telling people, \u2018When you go and see B.B. King, you gonna see B.B. play Lucille. And when you come to see Shirley King, you gonna see somebody that knows how to shake a mean hip!\u2019 And that just got me over all over the world. Any place I go, people was always bragging about my showmanship. Sometimes they wouldn’t even talk about my singing! It was always \u2018the amazing entertainer.\u2019 Always.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though her answer begins with a sigh and \u201chere we go with this question,\u201d King is willing to discuss what it was like growing up with B.B. King for a father. \u201cMy daddy was never home,\u201d she says. \u201cHe was famous when I was born, and he was touring like crazy when I was growing up. But he always spent time with me to the point of letting me know, \u2018I love you, But I really got to do this. Because later on in life, it will benefit you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Click to continue<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… Her father went on to tell her how he first learned of her participation in The Human Tornado. \u201cHis band members were watching it, and he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22098,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41],"tags":[4720],"class_list":["post-22095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","tag-shirley-king","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22095"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22187,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22095\/revisions\/22187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}