B.B. King explains how his famous guitar, Lucille, got her name

(Image credit: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images/Gibson)

published 15 May 2015

B.B. King, who died Thursday at age 89, named his guitar Lucille because of a woman he never met. In fact, there have been many Lucilles, most famously a series of custom-designed Gibsons but starting with a $30 guitar he was playing at a bar in Arkansas back in 1949. King was so enamored with his guitar he talked to her in concert and even famously wrote a love song for her. But as to how Lucille got her name, King explained, it was an homage to idiocy.

In that small club in Twist, Arkansas, two guys got in a fight — over a woman named Lucille, he later learned — and knocked over a heating barrel, setting the wooden bar on fire. King escaped but rushed back in to save his guitar. "I named my guitar Lucille to remind me never to do a thing like that again," he says in the video below. Which, really, is a pretty good story. Rest in peace, B.B. King. —Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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