Riley B. King better known as B.B. King was born on September 16th 1925 to a family of sharecropping farmers near a small town named Itta Bena in the Mississippi Delta. King's parents Albert and Nora Ella King separated when he was five years old and shortly after his mother moved to Kilmicheal Mississippi where Riley spent most of his time living with is grandmother. By age seven King was now working the field like a grown man. A couple of years later at the age of nine his mother died. King continued to live with his grandmother after his mother had past away. His grandmother was very religious and he attended church services with her. It was in the church where King begins to take an interest in music. He had dreams of becoming a gospel singer and learned how to play basic notes on the guitar from his preacher. In 1940 King's grandmother died and he had trouble making ends meet and eventually went to live with his father. (The King of Blues)
In his teens King moved back to the Delta and one of his employers loaned him money so he can purchase his first guitar. He continued to teach himself by using mail-order instruction books. King was eventually able to land a skilled job at the time as a tractor driver. When he wasn't working he was a street performer "he sang for small change on street corners in the nearby towns, sometimes visiting as many as four towns in a single evening". (Academy of Achievement)
King had to register for the draft in 1944 but was deferred because he got married to his first wife later on that year; also his employer had applied to the draft board on his behalf for occupational deferment. (The King of Blues)
After being released from the military King had plans of leaving plantation life for the big city. He tried to convince members of small gospel groups he sung with to join him but realized if he was going to make it big he'd have to do it on his own. He eventually left Mississippi and hitchhiked to Memphis with $2.50 in his pocket. When King arrived in Memphis in 1946 he stayed with his cousin Bukka White who was a well known blues-man.
King’s stowaway status soon came to an end, and he was employed as a crewmember on steamboats. Captains taught him to navigate the boats on rivers in Florida and Alabama, and his acute sense of learning gave way to him becoming a captain (KING RANCH). Capt. King plied the waters of Alabama until 1842. In that year he served aboard boa...
Coretta Scott King was born on April 27, 1927 in Heiberger, Alabama. Heiberger was a small segregated town. Coretta’s parents were Obadiah and Bernice Scott. She has an older sister named Edythe and a younger brother, Obie. Coretta was named after her grandmother Cora Scott. Her family was hard working and devoted Christians. Coretta had a strong temper, feared no one and stood up for herself.
Some people may call him “The King”, Elvis Presley is a well-known musician who stepped out of the norm and created a different kind of music. Presley combined pop, country, gospel, and black R&B to create his musical style. Presley caught everyone’s attention with his dance moves and musical talent. Elvis Presley led the way for many musicians, and has impacted the lives of many people.
B.B. King is an African-American musical artist and song composer. B.B. King, whose real name is Riley B. King. B.B. King was born in September 16, 1925 in Berclair, Mississippi. B.B. King was born into a sharecropping family with his mother, Nora Ella, and father, Albert King. Three years later, B.B. King’s little brother was born, his name was Curce King. B.B. King had a hard life growing up as a child. In 1928, B.B. King’s little brother died at the age of two from eating grass. A couple of years later, his parents separate and B.B. King leaves with his mother to his cousin’s house in another part of Mississippi. A very tragic event happened in 1935; B.B. King’s mother dies drunk and the cause of death was because of her diabetes complications. While B.B. King lived with his aunts and his grandmother, Elnora Farr, they took him to church where he played the gu...
Coretta Scott King was born Coretta Scott on April 27th, 1927 in Marion, Alabama to her parents Obadiah and Bernice Scott. She had two siblings. They were a boy named Obadiah and a girl named Edythe and lived on a farm owned by her family. Her education as a little girl included attending a one room elementary school and a bigger high school, that was further away from her home because of the racial segregation in her community, named Lincoln Normal School. Coretta graduated in 1945 and headed off to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. There she studied music and got into clubs pertaining to politics dealing with race such as the NAACP chapter of her school. She graduated from Antioch with a Bachelor’s Degree in music and education and shortly afterwards achieved a full scholarship to attend the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston to study concert singing. This is where she met her f...
The man today known as Nat "King" Cole was actually born in Nathaniel Adams Coles, in Montgomery, Alabama on March 17, 1917. By the age of four, his father, Edward James Coles Sr. and his mother, Perlina Adams Coles, decided it would be best that the family move to Chicago. By the time Nat reached four years of age, his father quit his job as a grocer and moved his family to Chicago, where he became a preacher.
I chose to read about Martin Luther King Jr. because he is a symbolic icon. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. His name was actually Michael King along with his father, but it was changed to Martin Luther when he was around five years old. He spent his childhood in the Auburn Avenue Neighborhood. At age twelve King attempted suicide by jumping out of a window when he heard that his grandmother, who he was very fond of, had died. He attended a high school that his grandfather had assisted in founding, and then Morehouse College, which his father also attended. He continued on to study theology at Crozer and then became
The life of Elvis Presley was fairly simple. He lived in Tupelo, Mississippi with his mom and dad. He became famous when he started making music and dancing. He made many great number one hits. On August 16, 1977 tragedy hit when they found Elvis deceased at his mansion in Graceland, yet still today most people in America are still affected by his death and by his music. Did you ever want to know what the king’s life was like before he became famous?
Family structure is often built on foundations consisting of, trust, principal, and unconditional love. Relatives are often a reflection of the morals, and dignity our guardians instilled in us. The struggle in families arises when an individual does not live up to the standards set for them, by family, and sometimes results in incarceration, or use of narcotics. In “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, readers encounter two brothers who are brought up in the rough neighborhood of Harlem, New York. Although Sonny, the younger brother, chooses a different life path in heroin usage, and in being a musician, his older brother, the narrator, becomes an algebra teacher. Despite not being in each other’s lives for a period of time, the knitted fraternal relationship that they share proves to be eternal regardless of their loss of contact. Ultimately, this story is an amazing illustration of how two people are from the same blood and home, are never quite the same, yet the love of a family will always be kindled. In the following articles "Sonny's Blues": A Message in Music, by Suzy Bernstein Goldman, explains how people often explain their emotions through music. In another article titled, -“ Black Literature Revisited: "’Sonny's Blues’" by Elaine R. Ognibene, she elaborates on the effects music has to bring two people together. Finally, in “The Jazz-Blues Motif in James Baldwin's "’Sonny's Blues’" by Richard N Albert discusses, the bound in families and enlightens on the cliché saying that blood is thicker than water. Ultimately, Albert provides the best interpretation of the short story “Sonny Blues,” because it’s more realistic and relatable from my own personal experience.
Narrative: Michael Jackson was born and grew up in a strict working family in Gary, Indiana, USA on August 29, 1958. Jackson showed an early interest in music as did most of his family. His mother sang frequently, his father Joseph Jackson played guitar in a small-time R&B band, his older brothers often sang and played with their father’s guitar. Soon the family singing group started, with Michael as the main puppet and four of his older brothers. “After all it seemed to be the simplest way to earn money to feed so many kids said Joseph Jackson”. If you can't feed your kids teach them how to feed themselves. Anyway Michael soon outgrew his brothers with his unique talent not just for singing but for dancing as well. Jackson’s father, who is a controlling supposedly abusive father. "My father beat me. It was difficult to take being beaten and then going onstage.
Elvis was born in 1935 in Mississippi, he was supposed to be a twin but his brother was stillborn. He grew up an only child. In 1948 the Presleys moved to Memphis, where in his high school days would hang around Beale Street where B.B. King was known to perform at, drawn into the music style of the blues. After graduating in 1953, he planned out his normal life of becoming a truck driver, and in his spare time recorded a couple songs at a recording service Sam Phillips started up that anyone could record a song for four dollars. Upon going back to the studio he met Sam Phillips who
with his wife and his 4 kids,Yolanda King, Martin Luther King the 3rd, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King.)
B.B. King’s first musical influence came from his church, Church of God in Christ. He was forbidden to play blues at home. Instead, he sang in spiritual groups like the Elkhorn Singers and Saint John’s Gospel Singers. A relative of B.B. showed him his first chords on the instrument. According to B.B. King, King of the Blues Worldwide (n.d.), as a teenager, he played on street corners for dimes, and would sometimes play in as many as four towns a night. When he started making more money playing in one night than he would in a week on the farm, he headed to Memphis. At that time, Memphis was where every style of African American musicians of the South gravitated. B.B. stayed with his cousin, Bukka white, a blues performer, who schooled him further in the art of the blues.
King was born into a financially secure middle-class family, thus he had access to better education than majority of black children his age. He attended segregated public schools in Georgia (David T. Howard Elementary and Booker T. Washington High School).