BB King Sketch by Atlanta Artist Corey Barksdale Jazz Art

Published 20 months ago

Atlanta artist Corey Barksdale has created a video about the life of famous Blues musician BB King. At the beginning of the video Corey Barksdale sketches a portrait of BB King using a ball point pen and sharpie marker. B. B. King arrived in Memphis... more

Atlanta artist Corey Barksdale has created a video about the life of famous Blues musician BB King. At the beginning of the video Corey Barksdale sketches a portrait of BB King using a ball point pen and sharpie marker. B. B. King arrived in Memphis for the first time in 1946 to work as a musician, but after a few months of hardship he left, going back to Mississippi. There he decided to prepare himself better for the next visit and returned to Memphis two years later. Initially he worked at the local R&B radio channel WDIA as a singer. In 1949, he began recording songs under contract with Los Angeles-based RPM Records. Many of King s early recordings were produced by Sam Phillips, who later founded Sun Records. King was also a disc jockey in Memphis, where he gained the nickname Beale Street Blues Boy , later shortened to B. B. Before his RPM contract, B. B. had debuted on Bullet Records by issuing the single Miss Martha King (1949), which got a bad review. less

Tags: bb king b.b art artist atlanta decatur georgia corey barksdale blues musician jazz blue fine