B.B. King would readily tell anyone who asked that he wasn’t the best blues musician of the 20th century.
What he wouldn’t say is that by the time he finished a career that lasted almost until his death last May at the age of 89, he had become one of the century’s most important.
He left that for others to say, and the latest to chime in is the PBS American Masters series, where "B.B. King: The Life of Riley" airs at 9 p.m. ET Friday (check your local listings).
It’s a basic biography of King, covering all the important parts of a life that took him from the cotton fields of Mississippi to the White House and the swankiest joints in the world.
It also took him from the segregated world of the 1930s American South into a world where he was welcome anywhere audiences appreciated a good stinging blues guitar.
By the time he finished, that was pretty much everywhere, and Riley “Blues Boy” King was a big part of the reason. His easygoing manner and clean, distinctive sound walked the blues into many a place where it had never before been even an afterthought.
"Life of Riley" does not, however, paint King’s world as a fairytale place that gradually filled with rainbows and unicorns. If he made the music sound easy, the life of a musician was hard, and the country in which he grew up often made it harder.
As a child he witnessed a lynching, and for the first 15 years of his career on the road, he and his band couldn’t get a sandwich or a room at most of the nominally public facilities in the South.
Like the more fortunate among his peers, he survived that to see some measure of progress, and King specifically got a boost from the admiration he inspired in the likes of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Bono and other white musicians.
King described himself as a working musician, and that pretty much nailed it. He was in his 20s when he went on the road, and he never left. Once he bought the bus for his band, it became his home, the place he lived for 250 or more days most years.
That makes it no surprise he became amazingly proficient at what he did, or that he racked up two marriages and a small flock of children without ever settling down.
American Masters notes the wives, skips the children and only makes passing reference to matters like his IRS tax problems and his battle with diabetes.
Instead, it uses its hour to focus on his music and its influence, which was probably the right call.
Even then, there isn’t time to cover his very successful early recording career or his lifelong admiration for Frank Sinatra, whom he called his favorite singer and who helped him desegregate some Las Vegas clubs.
Vintage interviews do show him talking about how he developed his early blues appreciation from Bukka White and later his guitar style from Django Reinhardt and T-Bone Walker.
We also get the story of why he called his guitar Lucille. He rescued it from a burning club, and later learned that the men who set the place on fire had been fighting over a girl named Lucille. King said he chose the name to remind himself never to run into a burning building again.
"Life of Riley" includes short clips of King on stage and behind the microphone when he was a DJ at WDIA in Memphis in the early 1950s.
These quick snapshots of King chronicle an important and instructive life – and almost every one leaves you wanting more.