He introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending, shimmering vibrato, and staccato picking that influenced many later electric guitar blues players.

[15] He was attracted to music and taught himself to play guitar beginning his career in juke joints and on local radio.

[18] When he was four years old, his mother left his father for another man, so he was raised by his maternal grandmother, Elnora Farr, in Kilmichael, Mississippi,[18] then in Lexington.

[22] In 1943, King left Kilmichael to work as a tractor driver and play guitar with the Famous St. John's Gospel Singers of Inverness, Mississippi, performing at area churches and on WGRM in Greenwood.

He performed on Sonny Boy Williamson's radio program on KWEM in West Memphis where he began to develop an audience.

I had Tuff Green on bass, Ben Branch on tenor sax, his brother, Thomas, on trumpet, and a lady trombone player.

This led to a significant increase in his weekly earnings, from about $85 to $2,500,[42][43] with appearances at major venues such as the Howard Theater in Washington and the Apollo in New York, as well as touring the "Chitlin' Circuit".

[44] That same year he founded his own record label, Blues Boys Kingdom, with headquarters at Beale Street in Memphis.

"[45] From the late 1960s, his new manager, Sid Seidenberg, pushed him into a different type of venue as blues-rock performers like Eric Clapton (once a member of the Yardbirds and Cream) and Paul Butterfield were bringing blues music to appreciative white audiences.

"[51] From the 1980s to his death in 2015, he maintained a highly visible and active career, appearing on numerous television shows and sometimes performing 300 nights a year.

In 1988, he reached a new generation of fans with the single "When Love Comes to Town", a collaborative effort with the Irish band U2 on their Rattle and Hum album.

[41] In December 1997, he performed in the Vatican's fifth annual Christmas concert and presented his trademark guitar "Lucille" to Pope John Paul II.

[52][53] In 1998, King appeared in The Blues Brothers 2000, playing the part of the lead singer of the Louisiana Gator Boys along with Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Koko Taylor and Bo Diddley.

In 2000, he and Clapton teamed up again to record Riding With the King which won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album.

During his show in Montreux at the Stravinski Hall, he jammed with Joe Sample, Randy Crawford, David Sanborn, Gladys Knight, Leela James, Andre Beeka, Earl Thomas, Stanley Clarke, John McLaughlin, Barbara Hendricks and George Duke.

[60] In 2007, King played at Eric Clapton's second Crossroads Guitar Festival[61] and contributed the songs "Goin' Home", to Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino (with Ivan Neville's DumpstaPhunk)[62] and "One Shoe Blues" to Sandra Boynton's children's album Blue Moo, accompanied by a pair of sock puppets in a music video for the song.

[68] In 2011, King played at the Glastonbury Music Festival,[69] and in the Royal Albert Hall in London where he recorded a concert video.

[75] On October 3, 2014, after completing his live performance at the House of Blues in Chicago, a doctor diagnosed King with dehydration and exhaustion and the eight remaining shows of his ongoing tour had to be canceled.

In the September edition 1995 of Vintage Guitar magazine, early photos show him playing a Gibson ES-5 through a Fender tweed amp.

"[80] He moved on from the larger Gibson hollow bodied instruments which were prone to feedback when played at high volumes to various semi-hollow models beginning first with the ES-335 and then on to a deluxe version called the ES-355 which used a stereo option.

King Signature Electric Guitar Strings" with gauges: 10–13–17p–32w–45w–54w and D'Andrea 351 MD SHL CX (medium 0.71mm, tortoiseshell, celluloid) picks.

King: The Life of Riley, a feature documentary about him narrated by Morgan Freeman and directed by Jon Brewer, was released on October 15, 2012.

Several of them also went public with the allegation that King's business manager, LaVerne Toney and his personal assistant, Myron Johnson had fatally poisoned him.

A defamation suit filed by Johnson against the accusing family members (including his own sister, Karen Williams) is pending.

He credited Sinatra for opening doors to black entertainers who were not given the chance to play in white dominated venues.

[103] In September 1970, King recorded Live in Cook County Jail during a time in which issues of racism [104] and class in the prison system were prominent in politics.

[105] In 2002, he signed on as an official supporter of Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit organization that provides free musical instruments and instruction to children in underprivileged public schools throughout the United States.

[56][108] He appeared in several television commercials for OneTouch Ultra, a blood glucose monitoring device, beginning in the early 2000s.

American Idol contestant Crystal Bowersox, who was diagnosed with diabetes at age six, would co-star with King in later commercials.

[77][111][112] On May 14, 2015, at the age of 89,[22] he died in his sleep from vascular dementia caused by a series of small strokes as a consequence of his type 2 diabetes.