Peter Guralnick, author of the acclaimed two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, "Last Train to Memphis" and "Careless Love," offered a particularly rounded assessment of Mr. King's enormous contribution to blues and rock:

"It was King's style of rapidly picked single notes, embellishing and extending the vocal and rarely supporting it with full-bodied chords, which prevailed to create a whole blues-tinged vocabulary for modern rock.

....He was born Riley B. King on Sept. 16, 1925, in a sharecropper's cabin near Indianola, Miss. His father, Albert, often worked two consecutive double shifts, 48 hours, at 50 cents a shift. Mr. King's parents separated when he was 4, and his mother took him to her family in Kilmichael, in the hills east of the Delta. Mr. King walked six miles round trip to a segregated one-room schoolhouse. He earned 35 cents a day picking cotton.

At 7 he became fascinated with the gospel singing and guitar playing of a sanctified preacher, Archie Fair, a distant relative, at the Church of God in Christ. That preacher let the young Riley play his guitar and urged him to become a minister. But against the wishes of his deeply religious mother, who called the blues "devil music," the boy listened to Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson on the radio.

At 9 Mr. King was left alone. His mother died at 25, perhaps of diabetes, and then his grandmother died. He said that a plantation owner named Floyd Cartledge and his family allowed him to live by himself on their property and earn his keep by performing house chores and milking cows. They kept a paternal eye on him. In his autobiography Mr. King said that while other plantation owners were "coldblooded racists," Cartledge - whom he still calls "Mr. Flake" - was decent enough to advance him $15 to buy a cherry-red Stella guitar when he was 12.

A brief, unhappy reunion with his father - who had remarried - led Mr. King to strike out on his own at 13. A very long, hard struggle has paid off handsomely - it's a great story.

The first two bios in the series are available: Bo Diddley here, Chuck Berry here.