Blues icon B.B. King laid to rest

The Mississippi Delta region said goodbye to native son and blues icon B.B. King on Saturday at his funeral in Indianola, Miss.

Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson read a letter from President Obama, which called King an inspiration to blues lovers everywhere and to up-and-coming artists.

"The blues has lost its king and America has lost a legend," the president wrote. "No one worked harder than B.B. No one did more to spread the gospel of the blues. He gets stuck in your head, he gets you moving, he gets you doing the things you probably shouldn't do — but will always be glad you did. B.B. may be gone but that thrill will be with us forever."

And, Obama predicted, "there's going to be one killer blues session in heaven tonight."

The sharecropper-turned-Rock Hall of Fame member, who won more than a dozen Grammys over the course of his career, died May 14 at his home in Las Vegas at age 89.

"(King) never really left Mississippi," his biographer, Dick Waterman told the Clarion-Ledger. "He went to the Kennedy Center Awards, he went to Scandinavia for the Polar Music Prize — whatever the accolade, he took the poor of Mississippi with him so they could have joy in his accomplishments."

On Friday, fans stood in line for hours to pay their respects at the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. It's estimated that more than 4,000 people passed by his open casket at the public viewing. The museum turned its Cotton Gin room into a memorial to King, where he laid in state surrounded by large bouquets of flowers flanked by two of his Lucille guitars.

King will be laid to rest at the museum following Saturday's ceremony.

One of the mourners was fellow blues star Buddy Guy, who regretted that his first visit came after his friend's death.

"His left hand was a special effect," Guy explained to the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger's Jacob Threadgill, describing King's trademark string-bending move that made his guitar sound as if it was singing. "Now we have to buy it and press it with our foot to get that because nobody can do that like him."

"Guitar players when he came along and myself, you could count them on one hand. If you knew how to play guitar, you stood out like a sore thumb. … When the British started playing the blues and thought it was something new, that's when B.B. King, Muddy Waters got discovered."

One of the King's sons, Willie King of Chicago, said his father taught him to respond with love when others are angry.

"For a man coming out of the cotton field unlearned and you take his music and draw four corners of the world together — that is amazing."

Contributing: Jacob Threadgill, The Mississippi Clarion-Ledger; and the Associated Press