By George Varga, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Thursday, February 10, 2011

For the past five decades, savvy music fans around the world have hailed the iconic B.B. King as one of the greatest blues artists ever. But to get a true measure of this 14-time Grammy Award-winner, who performs here Wednesday at the Balboa Theatre, we asked some of his fellow musicians to weigh in.

“He treats me like an equal, but I don’t see it that way,” Eric Clapton said. “He’s like a father figure and uncle. He’s this genius artist to me. I can’t ever see myself as being in the same league with him.”

Fellow guitarist David Lindley, best known for his work with Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt, is equally effusive.

“B.B. has influenced everybody,” Lindley said. “Everyone who plays electric guitar has come through B.B., directly or indirectly.”

The late Stevie Ray Vaughan, who died in a 1990 helicopter crash, also sang the praises of King (whose classic 1964 album, “Live at The Regal,” inspired him to become a guitarist). Vaughan credited King for teaching him the importance of concision.

“Sometimes one note is all you need,” Vaughan told me in a 1985 San Diego Union interview. “B.B. showed me that. We were playing in Austin, and I had the pleasure of sitting in with him. He played rhythm guitar for me for four songs that I played lead on. Then he stood up and played one note, and I died. It was the best note I’ve heard in years!”

King, 85, now sits when he performs with his brassy band. It’s one of the few apparent concessions to age by this still-vibrant legend, whose recording partners range from the Count Basie Orchestra to the Rolling Stones and U2.

A seemingly tireless road warrior, the man born Riley B. King has thus far performed nearly 15,000 concerts, with a high of 342 shows in 1956 and an average of 250 gigs a year until the late 1990s. By 2005, he had cut back to “only” 150 concerts a year.

King is scheduled to perform 12 concerts this month alone, followed by a tour of Australia and New Zealand in April, and an eight-country European concert trek in June. His diabetes has not visibly slowed King, a Las Vegas resident.

True, he spends more time talking to his audiences than he used to. But he still sings and plays guitar with so much passion you might think his life depended on it. Knowing King, it just might.

“As long as people buy my records and come to my concerts, I don’t see anything else I’d like to do,” the blues icon told me in a 2005 Night&Day interview.

“One of the great joys for me is to be able to think that people appreciate what I’ve done, through the way they act and their way of treating me. That makes me feel that I’ve been kind of productive, somewhat, and that’s the richest feeling you can have.”