An intimate but spacious Times Square supper club that ranges well beyond its titular subject matter. It's got great sound and sight lines and a refreshing no-attitude ambiance.
Riley B. King was born to a family of poor sharecroppers on a plantation near the small town of Itta Bena in the Mississippi Delta. He found inspiration in the music of the African American church. He dreamed of becoming a gospel singer and learned the rudiments of guitar from his preacher. He arranged with his employer to acquire his first guitar and taught himself further with mail-order instruction books.
He was playing at a dance in Twist, Arkansas when a fight broke out on the dance floor. A kerosene lantern fell over and the wooden building caught on fire. At first, King fled along with the crowd, but he dashed back into the burning building to rescue his cherished guitar and barely escaped alive. When he learned the men were fighting over a woman named Lucille, he gave the name to his guitar to commemorate his close call. Ever since, he has called every one of his trademark Gibson guitars "Lucille."
Over the course of his career, B.B. King has received 18 Grammy Awards, the Presidential Medal of the Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. In 1991, he opened B.B. King's Blues Club in Memphis; he has since opened clubs in New York, Los Angeles and Connecticut.
When pop music's dinosaurs stomped through New York in years past, they had no choice but to head for a high-art theater, a beat-up club, or an overpacked bar downtown. Now classic rockers like Peter Frampton and Blue Öyster Cult and R&B legends like Chic and James Brown play the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, an intimate but spacious Times Square supper club that ranges well beyond its titular subject matter. It's got great sound and sight lines, a refreshing no-attitude ambience, and table-service food that's actually very good, next door is Lucille's Grill (named after B.B. King's guitar). Lucille's features nightly live music and a full menu.
B.B. King's Blues Club & Grill features live music and good food, but the stage surface left something to be desired. Obviously, a venue like B.B. King's gets a lot of action, especially on stage. The club management decided to use Elephant Bark rubber flooring to cover the stage, for a long-wearing floor surface that isn't musically challenged.
The Elephant Bark rubber flooring provides a wear-resistant surface, which protects the subfloor from damage by heavy traffic, hefty equipment and raucous entertainers. The All Black color complements the subdued, classy look of B.B. King's, while still providing the necessary functionality.