B.B. King and Lucille in Sarasota This Week

B.B. King shows no signs of slowing down performing for audiences.

The 86-year-old blues legend will stop in Sarasota on Thursday night at 8 p.m. to perform his songs with his guitar "Lucille" in his hands at

King started recording music in the late 1940s and has sinced released more than 60 albums. His hits include "Thre O'Clock Blues," "You Don't Know Me," "The Thrill Is Gone" and many more.

Born in 1925, on a cotton plantation in Mississippi, King used to play on the corner of Church and Second Street for dimes.

With his guitar and $2.50, he hitchhiked north to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1947 to pursue his musical career. Memphis was the city where every important musician of the South gravitated and which supported a large, competitive musical community where virtually every black musical style was heard.

King stayed with his cousin Bukka White, one of the most renowned rural blues performers of his time, who schooled King further in the art of the blues.

In the mid-1950's while B.B. was performing at a dance in Arkansas, a few fans became unruly.  Two men got into a fight and knocked over a kerosene stove, setting fire to the hall.  B.B. raced outdoors to safety with everyone else, but then realized that he left his $30 guitar inside, so he rushed back inside to retrieve it, narrowly escaping death.

When he later found out that the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, he decided to give that name to his guitar. Each one of B.B.'s guitars since that time has been called “Lucille”.

Tickets prices range from $30 to $70. For more information and to buy tickets, contact the Van Wezel Box office at 953-3368 or log onto www.vanwezel.org.