BB King and Benjy

When Benjy, our youngest son, was a teenager in DC, he and his friends talked about, heard, collected tapes of BB King. So when Strathmore, the new music center on Rockville Pike that's an exciting rival to the Kennedy Center, sent me an email about a BB King concert I asked Benjy if we should go to hear the famous 82-year-old blues guitarist and singer. "YES, YES, YES" came back to me. So last night we did. Sitting higher up than Max liked, we saw the great man who came on stage in a gold jacket after the warm up by a pianist and by his own seven-man band. He sat himself on a chair center front and for two hours controlled the band and us with a rambling mix of stories, songs, and appreciations of each of his musicians. He allowed his age to come into it all and to do little riffs on viagra and "ladies" and how much he loved them and how he did not like what today's rap and blues singers say about the ladies. He is a superb artist and performer. It didn't feel like a farewell appearance and he said it was not. But maybe it was and maybe it would be our only time to experience his magic. So thanks Benjy for this and so much more.