BB King "One Kind Favor" (Page 2 of 2)

This is wandering off-topic a bit, and should really be on the Joe's Guitars, Amps and Gear page, so hopefully this is the last word.

Through the years, there have been many Lucilles. Today, Lucille is widely recognized as a black-with-gold-hardware Gibson ES-355–style guitar.

"Lucille’s" beginnings date to 1949, when King, then in his early 20s, was performing at a nightclub in Twist, Arkansas, in the dead of winter. To heat the cold room, King recalled in a video interview, “they would take something that looked like a big garbage pail, half fill it with kerosene, light that fuel [and] set it in the middle of the dance floor.” All well and good, but on this night, a fight broke out between two men, and the pail was knocked over. “It spilled on the floor, it looked like a river fire,” the guitarist said. “And everyone started to run for the front door, including B.B. King.”

The blueseman managed to make it to safety outside — only to realize he had left his guitar behind. He raced back inside to retrieve it even as the wooden building, he said, “started to fall in around me.” The next day, he learned that two men had died in the blaze and that the fight that had set off the tragic chain of events had been over a woman who worked at the club. Her name was Lucille.