Excerpted from Reader’s Digest (October 2006)
As told to Alanna Nash
“I guess I’ve earned the right to make a few observations about life, since I am now an old man of 81. And one thing I know for sure: age has nothing to do with friendship. Neither does race.
Looking back over my long career as a bluesman, I know that three of my friendships - with guitarists Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix - stand out for me. Each of these men has given me so much more than I ever gave them.
I first met Eric in 1967 at Cafe Au Go Go in Manhattan, when he was a youngster of 22 performing with Cream. He saw me in the audience and pointed me out. After the show, we got up on stage and made some music together. Eric pulls people in and he’s been a good friend to me ever since. We’ve never talked about this, but I believe he and I bonded because neither of us had what you would call a normal upbringing.
I grew up very very poor on a plantation in Kilmichael, Mississippi. While Eric had a lot of advantages I didn’t, he was raised in England thinking his grandparents were his parents and that his real mom was his older sister. I knew my mother, but she died when I was nine. Then I lived alone until I was 13 and rejoined my father. I can’t really say how I survived. I worked for a white family that was very good to me. I milked 20 cows a day. After I finished, I could go to school. I had to walk 5 miles to the one room schoolhouse (the white kids had buses). I guess you never miss what you never had. But it all feeds into playing the blues.
Eric told the newspapers in England that the one thing he really enjoyed about visiting the U.S. was meeting B.B. King. He told them, ‘If you like blues, you should go out and see him.’ That was a big thing for me. It was before I ever traveled to Great Britain.
Eric appeared on my first music DVD, B.B. King & Friends: A Night of Red Hot Blues, which we recorded in Los Angeles in 1987. Straight from his tour, he chartered a plane in order to get there one night, though his fingers were sore from playing. I thought that was tremendous. He could have said, ‘I’m tired. I just finished work,’ but he didn’t. Others were invited who didn’t come, but Eric’s a man of his word. His heart’s as big as I am.
He plays better blues than most of us and may be the best living rock ‘n roll guitarist there is. I loved working with him in the studio. He always had good ideas. In 1999, we recorded Riding With The King which became my first platinum CD and introduced me to a new generation of fans. We won a Grammy for it in 2001 and all I could say to Eric was thanks. No way would it have happened without him.
One other thing about Eric Clapton and me. Being from Mississippi, I’ve got a pretty bad mouth. I swear a lot. Eric never does. He’s a real English gentleman. He’ll do anything he can to help people. He even opened a rehab center in the Caribbean for folks suffering from addiction. He’s the kind of person the world needs more of. Not only as a musician, but as a man. I just love the guy.”
