B.B. King Birthplace — Berclair, Mississippi

Riley B. King — B.B. King — was born on 16 September 1925 in a sharecropper's cabin on a cotton plantation near Berclair, a small community in Sunflower County, Mississippi, close to the town of Itta Bena. He grew up picking cotton in the surrounding Delta fields, listening to the gospel music of his church and to the secular blues drifting from nearby juke joints, and taught himself to play guitar. A Mississippi Blues Trail marker at the Berclair site acknowledges the birthplace of the man who would become the most celebrated electric blues guitarist of the twentieth century and one of the most decorated American musicians of any genre.

King's path from the Berclair cotton fields to global stardom traced the classic trajectory of the Delta blues migration. He moved to Indianola as a teenager, working the fields and absorbing the Delta blues environment, then moved to Memphis in the late 1940s to pursue music. In Memphis he became a disc jockey at WDIA Radio — the first American radio station with all-Black programming — and quickly built a local following. His nickname derived from his radio persona 'The Beale Street Blues Boy,' shortened to 'Blues Boy King' and eventually 'B.B.' His recording career began in earnest in the early 1950s and continued for six decades, producing standards including 'The Thrill Is Gone,' 'Every Day I Have the Blues,' and 'Lucille.'

The Berclair area is in the heart of the Mississippi Delta in Sunflower County. The Mississippi Blues Trail marker is the primary point of acknowledgement at the birthplace site, which is otherwise farmland. B.B. King's later connections to Indianola — where the B.B. King Museum and Club Ebony are located — are better documented and more accessible to visitors. King died on 14 May 2015 in Las Vegas and is buried at the B.B. King Museum in Indianola.