How B.B. King’s Guitar “Lucille” Got Her Name

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before B.B. King became a blues legend, he nearly lost his life running back into a burning Arkansas juke joint to save his guitar. That night, after learning two men had started the fight over a woman named Lucille, King gave the guitar a name he would carry with him for the rest of his life. B.B. King’s longtime friend Myron Johnson and Daniel de Visé, author of King of the Blues, share the story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcast. Neil Young has Old Black, Willie Nelson has Trigger,

(00:32):
and Elvis Presley had the Dove. But perhaps the most
famous nickname for a guitar is what BB King named
is Gibson Es three point fifty five, and that is Lucille.
Up next, the story of how that guitar got its name.
Here to start us off is BB King's longtime friend

(00:53):
Byron Johnson, followed by Daniel Davis, author of the King
of the Blues. Let's get into this story.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
That story has been repeated and told, and I'm amazed
that it's remained consistent as it has over the years,
because you know, you can start a conversation at one
end and after it passes through four or five people,
that comes out on the other and completely different than
when it started, but very consistent with that. And that

(01:23):
BB was doing a performing at a juke joint.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Sort of off the books Joint in the black community.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
In Twist, Arkansas, which is.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Named for a white family called Twist. There was probably
probably a sharecropping community.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
And doing his performance. While he was on stage, these
two guys ended up finding out that they were romance
in the same woman.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
A beautiful server in this in this juke joint, and.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
They got into a fight over this woman. And back
in the day, juke joints ran year around and uh
during the cold, cold months, uh winter time, they would
take a big barrel like uh like like you would
see a big oil barrel nowadays, and uh they would
fill it up with kerosene and uh and wood and

(02:15):
uh they would light that and set it on fire
and put thatlf in the middle of the room and
it would radiate with the people mingling around and what
have you. It would radiate the heat coming off of that. Well,
these two guys got into a fight and uh tussling
and wrestling, and uh.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
They knock over a kerosene lamp and it starts a fire, and.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
The kerosene just flew across the floor and the fire
went with it on top of the kerosene, and it
just looked like a wave of a wave of fire
coming at you. And they set the place on fire. Well, Uh, BB,
like everybody else, uh jumped up and commenced a running,
getting the hell out of there, and uh trying to

(03:00):
save his life, trying not to get burnt up. And
uh because the place, I mean, these places were were shanties.
I mean, it wasn't much to him. They went up
like a cinderbox. You know, it was not much to him,
so it wanted. The place became engulfed in flames, and
everybody headed for the exit along with BB, and uh
he got outside and realized that in his haste to

(03:22):
uh protect his butt, that he had left his guitar
on the stage.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
B became Russias in to get his guitar so it
doesn't burn up because he can't afford to buy another one.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
You know, times were hard guitars and money was hard
to come back, and he was like a guitar. He
turned around and ran back inside and uh he got it,
but before he could get out, the place collapsed around him,
and he was Uh. He had some severe burns from that.

(03:56):
Uh and uh he showed me, he showed me the
scars before he died, and he got burned pretty good.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
And as I guess, as he's cradling his smoking guitar
outside of the burning remains of the juke joint. He
hears somebody say, oh man, that Lucille. She started the.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Whole thing, and he decided to name his guitar Lucille
to remind him of that moment and, as he put it,
to never do anything that's stupid again, because the guitar,
as important as it was to him, it wasn't worth
his life. And he came close to losing his life
that night. But that was the that's the gist of

(04:38):
that story. That's how that came about.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
And we don't really know when it happened. I think
some of the official counts say it was in nineteen
forty nine. Others say it was nineteen fifty. There's a
marker in Twist, Arkansas, which I think says it was
in the early fifties. But you don't see a mention
of Lucille anywhere in print. And I swear this to
you until nineteen sixty seven, which made me wonder, Wait,

(05:06):
did they brand Lucille in nineteen sixty seven? Did they
create the name then, you know, which wouldn't have surprised me.
So I went back and asked Sue his ex wife
and people who played with him in like nineteen forty nine,
nineteen fifty, nineteen fifty one, I said, was Lucille a thing? Yes, yes,
I guess she was. I guess that BB King called

(05:27):
his guitar Lucille and was calling her Lucille by about
nineteen fifty. This according to people who actually were playing
with him in nineteen fifty, and it was just an
inside thing, an inside joke, if you will. Lucille's identity
wasn't known outside of mister King's inner circle until he
starts talking about her, first with the Black Press, then

(05:47):
with the White Press in nineteen sixty seven. This when
he has a record coming out that's called Lucille and
a Song, wherein he tells her story.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
The original LUCILLEA that uh was left in the fire,
that that guitar was stolen years ago, uh many years ago,
as he put it. Uh he was uh after the fire.
He was going to visit a friend. I don't know
this is was a lady friend or a guy friend.

(06:18):
All he said told me was that he was going
by to visit a friend. And back in that day
he uh, well he put his guitar, he put uh
Lucille in the trunk of the of the car. And
back in that day, you had uh like for for s.
For example, GMC General Motors would make a car. Well,
they might might make a different model cars, but the

(06:42):
key to the trunk was generic and fit every model
that they made. So he left the guitar in the
trunk and went in to uh spend time with his friends.
Uh come out, someone at keyed the uh the trunk
and uh taking Lucille and uh you know, to this day,
UH we don't know who took her, where she is
or if she even exists at this point. But BB

(07:06):
had a number of guitars between the fire and the
time he passed, and BB was playing them, he named
them Lucille. Every guitar he ever played after that he
named Lucille.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
The story of how Lucille came to be. That is
the name of BB King's guitar. This is our American Stories.
More after these message. This is Lee Habib, host of
Our American Stories. Every day on this show we tell
stories of history, faith, business, love, loss, and your stories.

(07:43):
Send us your story small or large to our email
oas at Ouramerican Stories dot com. That's oas at our
americanstories dot com. We'd love to hear them and put
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