{"id":22096,"date":"2021-12-17T05:30:03","date_gmt":"2021-12-17T10:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22096"},"modified":"2021-12-10T15:56:33","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T20:56:33","slug":"the-kings-daughter-shirley-king-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/17\/the-kings-daughter-shirley-king-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The King’s Daughter: Shirley King (Part 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Shirley King says that her father made a point of providing opportunities for her to come and see him perform whenever he had a gig close to home. \u201cHe bought his middle sister a car so she could make sure I would come to some of the shows, and he made sure I was always dressed really pretty,\u201d she recalls. \u201cMy dad was a good dad. I don’t know how he was able to do both [being a father and a touring musician]. But he did them both very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being the daughter of B.B. King meant that a young Shirley King often met other musical giants. \u201cI would see my dad at some of these shows, and he wasn’t [always] on stages with blues people,\u201d she says. \u201cHe was on stage with people like James Brown, Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke, more Southern R&B soul singers.\u201d<\/p>\n

But when she was just 13, Shirley got to meet blues royalty. \u201cWhen I was seeing the shows, there would always be just men on there,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was like, \u2018Is this a man’s world or what?\u2019 I started asking myself, \u2018Are women supposed to do this?\u2019\u201d Yet at one of the shows, there was a female performer: Etta James. Shirley recalls that moment vividly: \u201cOh, my God, when she walked out on stage, I was like, \u2018I want this. I want to be like her!\u2019 She was beautiful; she looked like a black Marilyn Monroe. This woman was gorgeous.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when James opened up her mouth to sing, young Shirley was completely won over. \u201cI just knew that was my angel that I wanted to be like when I grew up,\u201d she says. \u201cI was impressed already with singing and show business, but I never really got the bug until I saw Etta James.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those kind of experiences dotted Shirley\u2019s life as she grew toward adulthood. But she remembers a stinging lesson her father taught her onstage, one that brought her down a peg. \u201cI went onstage with him one time,\u201d she recalls with a wince. \u201cHe was playing Lucille. I got excited and [told the crowd], \u2018Stand up! Clap your hands!\u2019 He stopped playing and looked upside my head like, \u2018What are you doing<\/i>?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Once the show was over, B.B. King looked his daughter right in the eyes and said, \u201cHoney, let me tell you one thing: Don\u2019t ever<\/i> do that again. When somebody invites you on their stage \u2013 whether it’s me or anybody else \u2013 be polite, go out there and take your time and mellow in to what’s going on. Because it\u2019s their<\/i> show, not your show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shirley King took that lesson to heart. And she feels that she learned quite a bit from her father. And she says that in his final years, she got closer to him, helping him in any way she could. \u201cBut I didn’t run to try to do things,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause I wanted my father get all his limelight. He worked so hard for that, and he loved it. He loved being on that stage, talking and singing and playing and making people happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says that when B.B. King became too ill to perform, it caused him great sadness. \u201cHe knew it had come to an end for him,\u201d she says. \u201cI saw that with my own eyes. So, I plan to work hard the rest of my time here on Earth, so my daddy will be happy with me even though he\u2019s gone. I want him to just be proud that everything he told me to do, I tried to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shirley is protective of her late father\u2019s legacy, and she has little good to say about the documentary B.B. King: Life of Riley<\/i>, made when her father was still living (and with his cooperation). \u201cThey got a bunch of entertainers on there with him,\u201d she says. \u201cBut to tell B.B. King’s real story, it couldn’t have come from other superstars. It would have had to come from somebody that knew B.B. King before he became famous.\u201d Nonetheless, she says she did help with promoting the film. \u201cYou know why? Because my daddy did it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, in part as a response to what she saw as that inaccurate portrayal, she eventually took her own initiative. Co-written with writer Dave Smitherman, Shirley King\u2019s book Love is King<\/i> was published in 2017, two years after her father\u2019s passing. She says that the book was part of her effort to set the record straight in the wake of B.B. King\u2019s death. \u201cIt was so much negativity going on when my father got sick,\u201d she says. \u201cMostly family and people suing and all that. And things had started to be said about my father \u2013 by people that he had trusted to work with him \u2013 making him look like not a good guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she doesn\u2019t mention anyone by name, King says that \u201cfor some of [his] other kids, it was about money. People wanted money.\u201d And she says that some of those people told their stories on television. \u201cI had been on TV,\u201d she notes. \u201cSo I didn’t need to degrade my daddy to get 15 minutes of fame on TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Shirley says that the experience of publishing Love is King<\/i> was ultimately an unhappy one. \u201cThe people who got me to do that book, they are not paying me for it,\u201d she says. \u201cSo it’s looking like I’m gonna have to get a lawyer.\u201d Meanwhile, she is already planning another<\/i> book. \u201cI’m fixing to write it and call it Me and B.B. King: Blues All Around Us<\/i>,\u201d she teases. \u201cBecause we know our natural facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

King is much happier when she\u2019s focused on her singing career. And she\u2019s already looking forward to a time, post-pandemic, when she can get back onstage. \u201cI’m thinking that when this thing breaks down, Joe Louis Walker is probably gonna want me to be involved in some of the stuff he already got set up that got canceled.\u201d And in the meantime, she\u2019s happy to field interview requests that come her way. \u201cThe Canada, UK and overseas, people are reaching out to me left and right,\u201d she says with a mixture of pride and wonderment. \u201cWhat I’m trying to do here is make my father proud of me. And it’s just been an amazing ride.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two… Shirley King says that her father made a point of providing opportunities for her to come and see him perform whenever he had a gig close […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22102,"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-22096","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\/22096","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=22096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22103,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22096\/revisions\/22103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}