B.B. King’s "Lucille" Marker

Interpretive marker highlights the site where B.B. King infamously named his guitar “Lucille.” In the mid-1950s, while B.B. was performing at a dance in Twist, two men got into a fight and knocked over a kerosene stove, setting fire to the hall. B.B. raced outdoors to safety with everyone else, then realized that he left his beloved $30 acoustic guitar inside. He ran back inside the burning building to retrieve it, narrowly escaping death. When he later found out that the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, he decided to name his guitar Lucille to remind him never to do a crazy thing like fight over a woman. Ever since, each one of B.B.’s trademark Gibson guitars has been called Lucille. A stop on the Arkansas Delta Music Trail: Sounds from the Soil and Soul.