Former US President George W. Bush (R) honors musician B.B. King as one of the 2006 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House in Washington, in this file picture taken December 15, 2006. [Photo/Agencies]

STREET CORNERS

Born Riley B. King on Sept. 16, 1925 in Itta Bena, Mississippi, he began learning guitar as a boy and sang in church choirs.

After World War Two Army service, King sang on street corners to pick up money. In 1947 he hitchhiked to Memphis, Tennessee, where he learned from and played with his cousin, revered blues guitarist Bukka White.

King went from touring black bars and dance halls in the 1940s and '50s to headlining an all-blues show at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1970 and recording with the likes of Clapton and U2 in the '90s.

He had a deep, resonant singing voice and, despite having what he called "stupid fingers," an immediately recognizable guitar sound.

His unique style of trilling the strings with a fluttering left-hand vibrato, which he called "the butterfly," delivered stinging single-note licks that brimmed with emotion and helped shape early rock.

In Memphis, King played in clubs and became a disc jockey at radio station WDIA, where he was known as the Beale Street Blues Boy. That was shortened to Blues Boy and then B.B., and those closest to him just called him B.

King became a star of the rhythm and blues charts and at his peak was on stage 300 nights a year and playing to audiences all over the world including the former Soviet Union and China. He still toured regularly into his 80s.