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(CNN) - Google celebrates Monday the anniversary of the birth of blues legend BB King with an animated doodle that includes its iconic version of "The Thrill Is Gone."
Google commissioned artist Steve Spencer, based in Little Rock, and artist Nayeli Lavanderos, based in Brooklyn, to create and animate doodle. The BB King Museum in Mississippi worked with the Google team on the project.
The video was the work of artistically directed by Angelica McKinley, based in Oakland and originally from Memphis, Tennessee, where King began recording. McKinley said he hopes the video will help people understand the magnitude of King's life.
Google doodle for the anniversary of the birth of BB King.
“Without having a complete formal education and guidance from his parents, King took the talent he was given at a time that was not kind to blacks and dedicated himself to sharing the music that was the pulse of the Mississippi Delta with the rest of the world, ”he said. "This music was created from the pain he knew all too well, but King decided to accept it."
King's version of "The Thrill Is Gone" was his greatest success and won a Grammy in 1970. He highlights King's distinctive voice and unique guitar style that combines penetrating notes with an instantly recognizable vibrato like his. The song was originally recorded by Roy Hawkins in 1951, but it was King's version that helped turn it into a blues standard.
Riley B. King was born on September 16, 1925, in a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, near Indianola. King sang with church choirs as a child and learned the basic guitar chords of his uncle, a preacher. In his youth, he played in the corners for coins and said he earned more in one night singing than in a week working in the cotton field.
In 1947, he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to pursue a life in music. He became a disc jockey of the famous WDIA radio station under the nickname of Beale Street Blues Boy, which King then shortened to "Blues Boy King" and eventually BB King.
BB King died on May 14, 2015 at age 89.
Google's doodle shows one of King's guitars, which always bore Lucille's name. The name comes from a concert that King performed in Arkansas in the 1950s. Two men fighting for a woman named Lucille knocked down a kerosene stove and started a fire. King left quickly but ran back to retrieve his $ 30 Gibson acoustic guitar.
When he heard about the fight, he decided to call his guitar Lucille, "to remind myself that I should never do something so silly." King used several Gibson guitar models over the years and called them Lucille. In the 1980s, Gibson began production of a custom model of his ES-355 model called Lucille.
During his career, he was nicknamed "The King of Blues." He earned a long list of honors: a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, but never rested on his laurels. He kept an incessant tour schedule until he was 80 years old.
King suffered from type II diabetes and began to decline in 2014. He died on May 14, 2015 at age 89.
BB KingdoodleGoogle
