Arnold S. Wolfe

All Hail the King and LucilleIt was the summer of 1969 and there was a party goin' on backstage at Ravinia, the outdoor concert venue 30 miles north of Chicago. The classical music squares running the joint, they'd never seen anything like it: For sixty years, backstage had been the site of oh-so-sedate and oh-so-cerebral pre-concert soirees, fore-fronted this summer by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Maestro Georg Solti. And, man, if he'd got wind of this, he'd never have stood for all the laughin', drinkin' and cussin' this then-21-year-old journalism student saw and heard when he was admitted backstage to interview the even-then-legendary B. B. King. Here he was all crisp in his burnt-orange sharkskin suit a half hour before his first gig at Ravinia, maybe 45 miles but cultural light-years away from the Regal, Chicago's black music Mecca, which King repeatedly sold out.