B.B. King Trivia
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50 free B.B. King trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This B.B. King trivia quiz covers the whole life of the King of the Blues, from a cotton plantation near Itta Bena, Mississippi to a funeral procession down Beale Street. The easy questions are the ones every music fan should know: the name he gave every guitar he owned, the instrument he played, the city whose radio station gave him his nickname, and the 1970 hit that became his signature song. From there it gets harder: what B.B. actually stands for, the cousin who first took him to Memphis, the dance-hall fire in Twist, Arkansas, the record label where Sam Phillips produced his early sides, the year he played 342 concerts, why he was released from the Army, the album Clapton and Santana use as a warm-up, the Pope he handed a guitar to, the pilot's licence, the Sinatra obsession and the fast-food chains he advertised for. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on King, his guitars, his key albums and his best-known songs before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our blues, Bob Marley and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was B.B. King's real first name?
Riley
Riley B. King busked on Mississippi street corners as a teenager and found that gospel songs earned him praise while blues earned tips, which, he liked to say, was why he became a blues singer.
Q 02What name did B.B. King give his guitars?
Lucille
Lucille was the woman two men were brawling over when they set a dance hall ablaze; King ran back in for his $30 guitar, then named it after her as a reminder never to do anything so foolish again.
Q 03The dance-hall fight that named B.B. King's guitar broke out in Twist, near his Memphis base, in which state?
Arkansas
Arkansas: the hall in Twist burned, and only the next day did King learn what the two men had been fighting over. He never met the woman whose name went on his guitars.
Q 04At which rock ballroom did a crowd of hippies give B.B. King a standing ovation before he had played a note?
The Fillmore
The Fillmore's queue of long-haired white fans made King think he had been booked into the wrong place; when promoter Bill Graham introduced him, everybody stood, and he cried.
Q 05B.B. King's stage name was shortened from what radio nickname?
Beale Street Blues Boy
Beale Street Blues Boy was the on-air name he took as a Memphis disc jockey, a job he wanted mainly to advertise his club dates; it was soon trimmed to Blues Boy, then to B.B.
Q 06Which future star was a regular teenage listener to B.B. King's radio station WDIA?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley tuned in for the blues and spirituals it played: WDIA was the first station in the country programmed entirely for Black listeners, and his own debut single was a cover of the bluesman Arthur Crudup.
Q 07Which bluesman is counted with B.B. King and Freddie King as one of the 'Three Kings of the Blues Guitar'?
Albert King
Albert King was no relation: born Albert Nelson, he took the surname once B.B. was a star and was even billed as 'B.B. King's brother'. Freddie King was unrelated too.
Q 08Where did B.B. King play 342 one-night stands in 1956?
Chitlin' Circuit
The Chitlin' Circuit grew up because segregation shut Black performers out of most white-owned venues; King worked its juke joints and dance halls for years before rock crowds found him.
Q 09B.B. King was born on a cotton plantation near which small Mississippi Delta town?
Itta Bena
Itta Bena was the nearest town to the sharecroppers' cabin where he was born, but he was not a Delta boy for long: when his parents split, his mother took him east to the hill country.
Q 10B.B. King is buried beside the museum that bears his name in which Mississippi town he called home?
Indianola
Indianola is where the teenage King busked for tips on Church Street; the brick cotton gin where he once laboured now forms part of his museum.
Q 11Who showed the young B.B. King his first three guitar chords?
His local preacher
His local preacher, the Reverend Archie Fair, played guitar while leading services and let the boy try it on a visit; King's own first guitar then cost him $15, a whole month's wages.
Q 12Which Delta blues radio show, launched on KFFA in 1941, made the young B.B. King want to be a radio musician?
King Biscuit Time
King Biscuit Time went out at midday, so the teenage King could catch it on his lunch break in the fields; from then on he knew he wanted to be a musician on the air.
Q 13The US Army released B.B. King during World War II because which civilian skill of his was ruled essential?
Tractor driving
Q 21B.B. King and James Brown played a three-day 1974 music festival staged to promote which Muhammad Ali fight?
The Rumble in the Jungle
The Rumble in the Jungle was postponed when George Foreman cut his eye in sparring, so the Kinshasa festival built to promote it went ahead with no fight to follow.
Q 22B.B. King's celebrated 1965 album Live at the Regal was recorded at a theatre in which city?
Chicago
Chicago's Regal was one of the great stages of the Black theatre circuit, but King shrugged off the album's fame: he wrote that he had 'probably played hundreds of better concerts'.
Q 23In 2005 Live at the Regal was selected for permanent preservation in what?
The National Recording Registry
Tractor driving got him released straight after boot camp: the Army ruled him essential to the war economy and sent him back to a Delta plantation that grew cotton under military contract.
Q 14Which bluesman, his cousin, took B.B. King in when he first moved to Memphis?
Bukka White
Bukka White, a master of slide guitar, housed him for ten months and helped him onto the local scene, yet King still went home to Mississippi before trying Memphis a second time.
Q 15Which bluesman's radio show on KWEM in West Memphis gave B.B. King his big break?
Sonny Boy Williamson
Sonny Boy Williamson, the harmonica star, put King on air and then passed him a paying club date in West Memphis, the start of his life as a working bluesman.
Q 16Hearing which guitarist for the first time convinced B.B. King he had to have an electric guitar?
T-Bone Walker
T-Bone Walker's 'Stormy Monday' did it: King said he 'had' to have an electric guitar, 'short of stealing', and he built his own single-string lead style on Walker's.
Q 17B.B. King played with Bobby Bland, Johnny Ace and Earl Forest in a Memphis group known as what?
The Beale Streeters
The Beale Streeters backed each other on Memphis gigs and records around 1950; two of them stayed linked for life, as King and Bobby Bland co-headlined tours and live albums in the 1970s.
Q 18Which future rock-and-roll star, then a teenage talent scout, is credited with bringing B.B. King to Modern Records?
Ike Turner
Ike Turner was paid by Modern's owners to find Delta talent while still in his teens; by their account and King's he made the introduction, and he then played piano on King's early hits.
Q 19Which producer recorded some of B.B. King's first RPM singles at his own small studio?
Sam Phillips
Sam Phillips taped King in 1950, but the breakthrough was not his: the label cut King's first number one in an improvised studio in a room at the Memphis YMCA.
Q 20Which slow blues gave B.B. King his first number one on the Billboard R&B chart?
3 O'Clock Blues
3 O'Clock Blues, a Lowell Fulson song, ended King's days as a local disc jockey: on the strength of it he set off on his first national tour, playing the Apollo and the Howard.
The National Recording Registry is the Library of Congress's list of recordings to keep for good; taping the show was a producer's idea, and the album began King's crossover to white audiences.
Q 24B.B. King opened for which band on its 1969 American tour, winning a new audience of rock fans?
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones had long sung his praises and chose him themselves to open 18 shows, putting King in front of arenas of young rock fans just before his biggest hit.
Q 25Which song, first a hit for Roy Hawkins in 1951, became B.B. King's signature tune and biggest pop hit?
The Thrill Is Gone
The Thrill Is Gone broke with King's own sound: his producer overdubbed strings in place of the usual punchy horns, and the slow minor-key blues climbed to number 15 on the pop chart.
Q 26Which Beatle told an interviewer that his ambition was to play guitar like B.B. King?
John Lennon
John Lennon said in a magazine interview that he wished he could 'do like B.B. King'; King read it and, by his own account, almost fell out of his chair in disbelief.
Q 27B.B. King won a new generation of fans in 1988 by recording 'When Love Comes to Town' with which Irish band?
U2
U2 put King, then in his sixties, in front of millions of young rock fans; he then toured with the band, walking on each night to share the encore.
Q 28B.B. King's hit 'When Love Comes to Town' was recorded at which historic Memphis studio?
Sun Studio
Sun Studio was picked for its ghosts: the first stars of rock and roll had recorded in the same small room in the 1950s, and King's hosts wanted to pay tribute to the music made there.
Q 29B.B. King's 2000 album Riding with the King was a collaboration with which British guitarist?
Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton was among the British rockers whose praise in the 1960s put King in front of young white audiences; three decades on, their album became the best-selling record of the bluesman's career.
Q 30At 85, B.B. King took the main stage at which British music festival in 2011?
Glastonbury
Glastonbury put him on its Pyramid Stage, where King let his band play a long fanfare before he appeared, then told the crowd he wished he could just go on and on.