Pop Talk by George Varga

For the past five decades, savvy music fans around the world have hailed the iconic B.B. King as one of the greatest blues artists ever. But to get a true measure of this 14-time Grammy Award-winner, who is now embarked on his latest world concert tour, we asked some of his fellow musicians to weigh in.

"He treats me like an equal, but I don't see it that way," Eric Clapton said. "He's like a father figure and uncle. He's this genius artist to me. I can't ever see myself as being in the same league with him."

Fellow guitarist David Lindley, best known for his work with Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt, is equally effusive.

"B.B. has influenced everybody," Lindley said. "Everyone who plays electric guitar has come through B.B., directly or indirectly."

The late Stevie Ray Vaughan, who died in a 1990 helicopter crash, also sang the praises of King (whose classic 1964 album, "Live at The Regal," inspired Vaughan to become a guitarist). He credited King for teaching him the crucial importance of concision in music.

"Sometimes one note is all you need," Vaughan noted in a 1985 San Diego Union interview. "B.B. showed me that. We were playing in Austin, and I had the pleasure of sitting in with him. He played rhythm guitar for me for four songs that I played lead on. Then he stood up and played one note, and I died. It was the best note I've heard in years!"

King, 85, now sits when he performs with his brassy band. It's one of the few apparent concessions to age by this still-vibrant legend, whose recording partners range from the Count Basie Orchestra to the Rolling Stones and U2.

A seemingly tireless road warrior, the man born Riley B. King has thus far performed nearly 15,000 concerts, with a high of 342 shows in 1956 and an average of 250 gigs a year until the late 1990s. By 2005, he had cut back to "only" 150 concerts a year.

King performed more than a dozen concerts in February alone. He is now embarked on an April tour of Australia and New Zealand, with an eight-country European concert trek in June and July, followed by a U.S.

tour in August. His diabetes has not visibly slowed King, a longtime Las Vegas resident.

True, he spends more time talking to his audiences than he used to. But he still sings and plays guitar with so much passion that you might think his life depended on it. Knowing King, it just might.

"As long as people buy my records and come to my concerts, I don't see anything else I'd like to do," the blues icon told me in a 2005 interview.

Moreover, as he made clear in that same interview, King has no intention of resting on his laurels, no matter how formidable they are.

"At my age, I feel like if I don't learn something new every day, it's kind of like a day lost," he said. "I think the clock is ticking, yes. In fact, I know it is. Frank Sinatra sang about 'the September of (his) years'; I think I'm in the November of my years."

Even so, King cites two role models for longevity that suggest he plans to remain musically active for years to come. The first is jazz pianist Eubie Blake, who had performed at a concert celebrating his 100th birthday not long before he died. The second is actor George Burns, who won an Oscar at 80 and a Grammy Award at 84, and remained active until just 20 months before he died, also at age 100.

"Eubie drank, smoked and looked at the girls until he was 100," King recalled with a chuckle. "And George smoked a big cigar and had two martinis every day. And I never saw him when he didn't have one or two girls hanging on his arms. I don't drink or smoke, but I like looking at the girls!

"I'm a diabetic, yes, but I'm pretty healthy ... So I feel if I live to be 90 or more, I'll be pretty lucky. One of the great joys for me is to be able to think that people appreciate what I've done, through the way they act and their way of treating me. That makes me feel that I've been kind of productive, somewhat, and that's the richest feeling you can have."

To find out more about George Varga and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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