How B.B. King's Guitar "Lucille" Got Her Name

On this episode of Our American Stories, Neil Young has "Old Black", Willie Nelson plays "Trigger", and Elvis worked with "The Dove", but perhaps the most famous nickname for a guitar is what B.B. King named his Gibson ES-355...Lucille. Here to tell the fiery story of how she got her name is B.B. King's longtime friend, Myron Johnson, and Daniel de Vice, author of King of The Blues.

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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 podcast or wherever you get
your podcasts. 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

(00:52):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
At a juke joint sort of off the books Joint
in the black community.

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

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Is named for a white family called Twist. There's 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 romancing
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 a year around and
h during the cold, cold months, uh winter time, they
would take a big barrel like like like you would
see a big oil barrel nowadays, and uh they would
fill it up with kerosene and wood and uh they

(02:16):
would light that and set it on fire and put
that lf 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

(02:59):
to 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 wasn't 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

(03:21):
haste to uh protect his butt, that he had left
his guitar on the stage.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
B became Russias in to get his guitars 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
whole thing.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Huh. 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 it was Lucille
a thing. Yes, yes, I guess she was. I guess
that BB King called his guitar Lucille and was calling

(05:28):
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 with the White Press in nineteen
sixty seven. This when he has a record coming out

(05:51):
that's called Lucille and a Song, wherein he tells her story.

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

(06:18):
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 Lucille in the trunk
of the of the car. And back in that day,
you had like for for s. For example, GMC General
Motors would make a car. Well, they might might make

(06:38):
a different model cars, but the 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 spend time with his friends. Come out someone at
keyed the the trunk and taking Lucille. And you know,
to this day, uh, I don't know who took her,

(07:01):
where she is or if she even exists at this point.
But BB had a number of guitars between the fire
and the time he passed, and Bib 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 messages. Liha Bibi here the host of
our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing
inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our

(07:40):
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