The Life-Threatening Story About How B.B. King Named His Guitar

In 1949, the world almost lost one of the greatest blues guitar players of all time, B.B. King, before he even reached his apex of fame. As fate would have it, the universe spared King, leaving him with a riveting story, memorable lesson, and what would become the name of every guitar he played since.

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We can’t help but wonder which King found more valuable in his lifetime.

How B.B. King Named His Guitar Lucille

Although B.B. King has played multiple Gibson guitars over his decades-long career, each guitar typically follows the body style of a Gibson ES-330 or ES-355 and features a slick black finish with gold features. Moreover, they all share the same name: Lucille. The name came to him after a terrifying night at a dance hall in Arkansas, where he and his band were playing. Somewhere in the tiny hall, two men began arguing. The argument soon became violent.

Being in the middle of winter, a kerosene stove was nearby, providing much-needed heat to the venue. One man knocked the other into the stove, knocking over the fuel tank and setting the hall ablaze. Before anyone on stage could fully process what was going on, dancers started dashing out of the hall at full speed. King and his bandmates followed shortly thereafter, leaving their instruments behind. Once King left the building, he realized he had left behind his most prized possession: his instrument.

Ignoring the requests of his bandmates to stay outside where it was safe, King returned to the dance hall. He nearly burnt to death trying to navigate the flames to get to the stage. Fortunately, he did, returning outside with his guitar in hand. The two men who started the fight, however, weren’t so lucky. The flames ended up trapping the men, burning and killing them. Later, King and his band discovered the men had been fighting over a woman.

The woman’s name? Lucille, naturally. “I named my guitar Lucille to remind me not to do a thing like that again, and I haven’t,” King once said.

The Blues Player Used His Instrument To Sing Its Own Ode

A guitar playing its own tribute is a lot like a brain thinking about a brain—it’s a strange, reflective process that highlights the subject’s intrinsic function. B.B. King’s guitar was Lucille. So, when he wrote a song about Lucille, it only made sense for Lucille to play it. He included a ten-minute tribute to his trusty ax on his fifteenth album, Lucille, in 1968. The track features King speaking over a blues shuffle as he riffs on his guitar, describing different ways the instrument has saved his life over the years. Lucille took me from the plantation, oh, and you might say, brought me fame, he begins.

King describes the brawl in Twist, Arkansas toward the end of the song. But before he does, he recounts another time his guitar was with him in a fateful turn of events. I remember once, I was in an automobile accident, King says over the music. When the car stopped turning over, it fell over on Lucille, and it held it up off me, really, it held it up off me.

Indeed, Lucille might have brought grave misfortune to those two unlucky men in an Arkansas dance hall in 1949. But she was far kinder to King.

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