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'It looked like a river of fire': The incredible story behind blues legend BB King naming his guitars

Posted May 14, 2015 11:00 pm

Marcus Baram

The sound that you're listenin' to

Is from my guitar that's named Lucille

I'm very crazy about Lucille

Lucille took me from the plantation

Or you might say brought me fame

- "Lucille"

B.B. King was married twice and had many romances but the real love of his life was Lucille.

The blues legend, who died on Thursday night in Las Vegas, where he had been in hospice care, was forever linked to his beloved guitars. On those black Gibson ES-355 guitars, both acoustic and electric, King amazed audiences with his signature style - "single-string runs punctuated by loud chords, subtle vibratos, and bent notes, building on the standard 12-bar blues and improvising like a jazz master," as the AP describes it.

<img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5555fd6969bedda630b7c493-1200-2000/lucille.jpg" border="0" alt="Lucille.JPG">The story of how King named his guitars Lucille was born in tragedy.

On a cold night in the winter of 1949, King was performing at a nightclub in Twist, Arkansas when a fight broke out between two men over a woman. One of the men fell against a burning barrel of kerosene in the middle of the room that was used to heat up the club. It tipped over, spilling the burning kerosene on the floor.

"It looked like a river of fire," King later recalled.

In a panic, everyone ran for the front door, including King. Standing outside, he realized that he had left behind his trusty $30 guitar.

"I went back for it," remembered King in an interview with NPR. "[It] was a wooden building, and it was burning so fast that when I got my guitar, it started to collapse around me. So I almost my life getting my guitar."

The next day, he learned that the woman the men were fighting over was named Lucille.

"I never did meet the lady but I learned that her name was Lucille so I named my guitar Lucille to remind me not to do a thing like that again," recalled King.

In 1980, Gibson introduced a special B.B. King Lucille model, featuring "Lucille" script, a maple neck and without the F-holes at the top of the guitar, as per King's preference so as to reduce feedback.

<img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5555d1a66bb3f71d4f806b02-1200-1715/83906491.jpg" border="0" alt="bb king">On his 80th birthday in 2005, Gibson launched a limited-edition Lucille and gave the prototype to King as a gift. He fell in love with it and it became his main gigging guitar. Four years later, it was stolen from him.

That Lucille ended up in a Las Vegas pawn shop, by now covered in dirt and full of scratches and dents. One day, guitar collector Eric Dahl bought it, took it home and cleaned it up.

He was curious about its provenance and spent weeks making phone calls and writing to guitar companies about this unusual instrument. In November of that year, he got a call from Gibson, telling him how it had been stolen from King.

A few weeks later, Dahl met King and returned the guitar to him.

"He kept thanking me and shaking my hand and was so happy," remembers Dahl.

In gratitude, King gave Dahl another Lucille that he signed, some guitar picks and he took a picture with Dahl that King kept in his office until the end of his life.

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