“I gave you a brand new Ford,” King sings, “but you said ‘I want a Cadillac’ / I bought you a ten-dollar dinner, and you said ‘Thanks for the snack’ / I let you live in my penthouse, you said it was just a shack.”
And then the almighty kicker: “I gave you seven children, and now you wanna give ’em back!”
On the recording, the crowd goes utterly wild. And no wonder — who else was addressing such wreckage of love in popular song at the time? (Certainly not the early Beatles, whose fluffy “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was the No. 1 hit song of 1964.)
“How Blue Can You Get?” enjoyed a mild revival in the 1990s, as a sample in the Primitive Radio Gods’ one-hit-wonder “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand” — but to B.B. King fans, it remains his crowning moment in a live setting.
B.B. King, whose contributions to the blues can hardly be overstated, leaves behind not seven children, as stated in the song, but a total of 15 children — by no less than 15 different women, according to the New York Times. (No wonder, then, that the alimony- and child support-beholden artist routinely played 200-300 shows each year.)
