In recent decades King's albums have been starry affairs like the platinum-selling, Grammy winning collaboration with Eric Clapton Riding With the King, 2005's birthday blues party with Billy Gibbons, Clapton, Bobby Bland, John Mayer, Roger Daltrey and Gloria Estefan called B.B King and Friends: 80, and the deeply rooted One Kind Favor, made with celebrity producer T-Bone Burnett.

Most listeners associate King with his 1970 break-though hit "The Thrill Is Gone," but King has been making recordings since 1949 and developed most of his repertoire, vocal phrasing and licks in the first 15 years of his career.

He's a look at 10 early King recordings that were signposts of his development during those formative years. � "Miss Martha King": B.B.'s first single was an ode to his wife, relying more on his soaring vocals than his stinging, vibrato drenched licks. It was cut in 1949 at Memphis radio station WDIA, where King was also a DJ. Publicity photos from this period show King embracing a single coil guitar, so he'd yet to discover his patented rich, ringing Gibson tone as well.