Riley B. "B.B." King grew up in the Mississippi Delta — the same world of flatlands, sharecropping, and Saturday-night roadhouses that shaped Jim Quessenberry's early life just across the river in Arkansas. Jim remembered B.B. King playing guitar on front porches in Coldwater and Twist, drawing workers out of the fields to listen.
King went on to become one of the most influential guitarists in American history, the defining voice of electric blues, and an ambassador of the Delta's culture to the world. For Jim, he was simply a man he remembered playing music in the communities he grew up in — which is exactly the kind of story that makes the Delta singular.