B.B. King would have been 100-years-old on September 16th, 2025.
I’ve said many times over the years what I love about Memphis is the music and music scene. Memphis music changed the world. And it wasn’t just Elvis.
When I came here for a job interview, as I came out of the Commercial Appeal building at 495 Union Ave. a short walk from historic Beale Street, I could hear the blues music wafting through the air. I was already a blues fan.
That was enough for me. I was sold that this was the place I wanted to be.
My instincts were good. I’ve had so many wonderful experiences covering the Memphis Music scene. Being a photojournalist in Memphis has been an amazing experience. I left the newspaper over ten years ago, but I still continue to cover and enjoy the music scene here.
One of my favorite subjects was the great blues entertainer B.B. King, who would have been 100 years old September 16th, 2025.
B.B. King was so personable, so warm and kind. I loved to watch him perform and work the audience. B.B.’s life was on the road; his people were everywhere. He knew people all over the world.
B.B. (born Riley B. King) grew up in the Mississippi Delta, finding his way alone as a young man with little family support. He eventually moved to Memphis where he found success and took on the name “Beale Street Blues Boy” after his DJ days. I’d recommend reading a fascinating biography about B.B. King, “King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King” written in recent years by one of my favorite authors, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Daniel deVise. B.B.’s life is fascinating.
You can also learn more about B.B. King at his museum in Indianola, Mississippi, at https://bbkingmuseum.org/. I feel honored that a few of my photos are in his museum.
One of the things that stood out to me about B.B. was his gratitude for the life he was given. He was so thankful that he was allowed to follow his dreams and play music for a living.
As Kings 100th birthday crept up, I thought about an interview I had taped with B.B. on his bus around 2010. I interviewed him for a project I was doing at the time, “What is the Blues and Who gets to do it?” Only a tiny portion of the audio interview was published. So I decided this would be a nice time to share some of my B.B. King photo archive and that audio interview.
HERE IS THE LINK TO MY INTERVIEW WITH B.B. KING ON HIS BUS JUST OFF BEALE STREET IN MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE 2010.
Harmonica great Charlie Musselwhite in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
One of the world’s great harmonica players, Charlie Musselwhite, (above) reflected on B.B. King when I was chatting with him from his Clarksdale, Mississippi home recently. Charilie remembers listening to B.B. on the radio WDIA. Both were born in Mississippi and both were bluesmen who lived in Memphis for a time. He said “ What stood out to me about B.B. King was as a human being, what a nice person he was, he was like and an example for everybody. He always had time to talk with you; he was very compassionate and had a lot of heart.” Charlie toured a few times with B.B. and opened for him, he sat in on occasion with B.B. King and he loved to be on B.B.’s tour bus with him and said they talked about all kinds of things, especially women. “He loved the ladies.”
Three time Grammy award winner entertainer Bobby Rush in Memphis at the Overton Park Shell 2025.
Entertainer Bobby Rush, (above) another Mississippi Bluesman, said, “B.B. was the kindest person; he’d give you the shirt off his back. He’d talk to you until YOU are ready to go home, not him. I learned a lot of things from B.B. '“ He reflected on how they both enjoyed being with people and their fans. Bobby says”I shake every hand if I can.”
Bobby Rush was at B.B.’s funeral, marching down Beale Street in Memphis next to the hearse.
I covered B.B. King’s funeral for the Associated Press. His hearse drove down Beale Street and then on down highway 61 into Mississippi to lay his body to rest in Indianola.
B.B. King funeral Here is a link to a short clip of that day on Beale Street.
Karen Pulfer Focht ©2025 All Rights Reserved
When Karen came to Memphis to work for The Commercial Appeal in 1988, one of her favorite photo beats was the Memphis Zoo. She has a love for animals, and she and her three children spent many hours visiting. Working closely with the zoo, Karen photographed the stories of many animals, zookeepers, and the zoo vets. Her ongoing favorite, though, was photographing the zoo’s babies. Her photo of a nuzzling mother and baby giraffe have been going viral for over a decade and have become one of her most popular photos. Karen’s photos have showcased the Memphis Zoo in publications worldwide. She has put together a collection of her photos that highlight the zoo’s mothers and babies in a new children’s book, Memphis Zoo Babies, available in the Memphis Zoo Gift Shop. Proceeds will benefit the zoo. The gift shop also sells her cards and photographs.
For an online purchase you can buy direct on Karen’s website @ https://www.karenpulferfocht.com/store/memphis-zoo-babies
Pridefully driving around Memphis, bragging on all things great that derive from the Bluff City, Carolyn Michael-Banks, founder of A Tour of Possibilities in Memphis, Tn. gives black history-focused tours.
With blues playing on her radio, Michael-Banks, also known as Queen, takes visitors to sites of historical and cultural significance to African Americans.
She highlights the best things about our city. But Queen does not sugarcoat the history.
Driving along Riverside drive, touting the majestic Mississippi River, the colorful bridges, the remarkable story of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Pyramid, our amazing musical history and Beale Street, she reminds her guests, “if this body of water could speak, I can only imagine the stories it would tell.”
Looking over the river, Michael-Banks offers a view of the city from a different vantage point. “On this body of water, two commodities were transported that changed the economy of this area;” she says as her voice tone changes, she pauses “cotton and enslaved people. On this same river, many used to escape slavery as well.”
For two-and-one-half hours, she highlights black owned businesses and the contributions that African Americans have made to make Memphis a such a great and significant city. She boasts about our soul food, blues music and B.B. King, COGIC, Stax, Robert Church and Obama’s visit.
But the guided historical tour also does not hide the darker side of the city’s history including injustice, segregation and racism.
Queen reminds Chicagoans Maryann and Reginald Marsh, touring on this day, that in front of them is the location where Nathan Bedford Forrest once had “Fresh Negro’s For Sale.” Woven through the ride that includes various wonderful landmarks, magical stories of inspiring people and popular Memphis attractions, she also tells of people who lived in fear of lynchings, of city riots, a civil rights struggle and the Martin Luther King assassination.
There’s no doubt about her love for the city. What she loves to share most is a sense of hope, optimism and deep respect for the people that came before her, the people like Tom Lee, Rosa Parks, Danny Thomas and Ida B. Wells, “the people who saw things that appeared to be impossible, but made them possible, in spite of.”
That is why she has named her tour A Tour of Possibilities.
By Karen Pulfer Focht ©2024
Much to our surprise, while we sang a gospel song led by Pete McCarty, one by one a few Amish guests were slowly drawn into the room. Pete, who is known for his jolly personality and rich deep voice, discovered a common bond, and touched by their presence, we sang one gospel song after another for over an hour. They listened to us sing, and with big smiles on their faces, they sang along too.
These Amish singing with us were from Shipshewana, Indiana, which is the third largest Amish and Mennonite community in the United States. They were visiting Durango on vacation. They took the train to Colorado.
The Amish are conservative Christians and they believe in a simple lifestyle, dress modestly, and live close to the land and without technology. They are known for building fine furniture sold all over the country.
After we sang together, they asked if they could sing us a song. They began chanting The Praise Song, VERY slowly in high German. They sang one verse, which took over five minutes. You can hear it here in this video. It's about 1:48 minutes in.
As little as we had in common, for a few minutes that night, we were all just the people of God.
Twice a year people come from around the world to learn blues harmonica from the masters, in the Mississippi Delta, where the blues began. I did a story for Delta Magazine about The Harmonica Experience.
Master harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite stops by The Harmonica Experience to share his stories.
The morning light streams into the Juke Joint Chapel as pilgrims take their
seats. Each one has traveled a good distance, hoping to gain some insight
and inspiration unique to the Mississippi Delta.
They’ve settled into rustic sharecroppers’ shacks and are surrounded by
cotton fields in full bloom.
Some are experts already, others just beginners. And for one week, they will
come together to learn how to play blues harmonica at The Harmonica
Experience in Clarksdale.
“Playing harmonica has brought me so much joy in my life and being able
to share that joy with others is priceless” says Cheryl Arena, a master
harmonica player and teacher from Boston. “But what better way to teach
folks how to play harp than down in the Delta… The Birthplace of the Blues,
where the musical vibe is as thick as the mud in the Mississippi River.”
Arena runs the workshop with a few other coaches, all professional
musicians from around the country. Each day, she expects participants to
attend group classes that offer a variety of harmonica techniques, song
writing, singing, and jam sessions, while preparing a song for performance
at the end of the camp.
The ‘Mississippi Saxophone” as some call it, is a challenging instrument to
play. It is easy to learn but hard to master.
“They say blues is a feeling and I certainly get that feeling when I visit the
Delta,” says Kate Wakeling, who travels annually from Australia to learn
how to coax and bend notes from her harmonica while keeping a bluesy 12-
bar-beat. “Staying at the Shack Up Inn I get a sense of the history of the
Delta and what life must have been like for those who labored under the hot
sun in the cotton fields. I can channel those feelings into my harmonica
playing.”
“The Harmonica Experience camp is the most wonderful week where you
get to learn from talented musicians and hang out and play music with
people from all over the world. It’s a very special week,” she says.
Twice a year on this former southern plantation, where blues legend
Pinetop Perkins once worked on the land, aspiring musicians sit on the
porches of their cabins calling music from their hearts and souls.
In the evening, the more skilled musicians often encourage others to join
along in a spontaneous jam. Some sing better than others, some play in a
group for the first time, but they all have fun making music together with
their new friends in this special place.
The workshops take place in a region where many great blues artists lived,
worked, played music and are buried. It is hallowed ground.
Harmonica legend Charlie Musselwhite stops by the camp on occasion. He
recently moved back to Mississippi, and now lives in Clarksdale. He shares
stories about playing with harmonica greats Muddy Waters, Little Walter,
Howlin’ Wolf, and many others.
“Ultimately you want to find your own blues in you and play that.”
Musselwhite tells the students, “Get out of your head and come down to
your heart.”
The harmonica has taken Musselwhite touring around the world and even
to the White House. But there is something about the humble Mississippi
Delta that he says he feels right down to his DNA, “you just walk out your
door and there are interesting people everywhere.”
The students, who come from all over the world, get to experience home
southern cooking from Ranchero catering. In the evenings Chris Green and
Carolyn Sykes serve up fried chicken, mac-n-cheese, corn bread, cobblers
and pie. And no meal would be complete without southern sweet tea.
For those that want something stronger, the bar is open. Campers can sip
some whiskey, wine or beer while jamming with the house band.
Two lines form on either side of the chapel. Students, some wearing
fedoras, Hawaiian shirts or sunglasses, all try and find their groove as they
jump in and play a sequence of riffs to a shuffle or slow blues being played
by the house band. They engage their imagination, their diaphragm, their
breath as they improvise, putting into practice the musical phrasing and
articulation they have been learning about all week.
Some frantically run their lips up and down the harmonica with excitement,
others pause and allow a cool and layback space between notes to
punctuate the sound they are going for.
Ralph Carter, an accomplished songwriter, composer and producer, teaches
students song writing during the camp. He also holds an independent
songwriting camp at the shacks.
Sitting in the Robert Clay shack, Carter asks students, many of whom never
really thought about writing a song, “what gives you the blues?” He
encourages them to make observations, think about rhymes, look for a
melody in what they are saying. He teaches song structure.
“The songwriter’s job is to help understand our life’s experience by
providing perspective, context and sometimes just the plain comfort of
sharing.” He encourages them, convincing them that each has a song inside
of them. “Music, songs, connect us to our humanity in a magically direct
way. They go directly to the heart.”
Not all players have to play or write blues, but for those who want to, he
says “The blues hangs heavy in the air in the Delta. There is something that
still feels raw here, exposed and vulnerable. The fact that the Blues and it’s
offspring are still going strong today, tells you something about the
enduring power of songs.”
By Karen Pulfer Focht © 2024
We all know Memphis has the best drinking water. It wins awards year after year. People are trying to protect it. Grammy-nominated Tracy Nelson, Shemekia Copeland, Loudon Wainwright, John Nemeth, and many others performed during Acoustic Sunday Live at First Congo Church, on Dec. 3, 2023 in Memphis, Tennessee. Protect Our Aquifer, which put on the fundraiser, is a grassroots non-profit working to protect the source of drinking water for Shelby County, Tennessee, and much of the Mid-South. The room was packed, and the music was fantastic.
Tracy Nelson and Shemekia Copeland duet Down So Low
For more information about the cause see https://www.protectouraquifer.org/
