On Tuesday, Charles Sawyer, a longtime journalist visited the B.B. King Museum where he shared many of his images and stories from his moments with B.B. King. In a special book talk with Mr. Sawyer, audience members received first-hand recounts of B.B.’s style, practices, personality, and more. Along with this, Mr. Sawyer shared some blues music on the harmonica in honor of B.B. King.
Charles Sawyer is a photographer, writer, musician, and the frontman of the blues band 2120 South Michigan Ave. For 27 years (1990-2017), he taught software engineering and blues history at Harvard Extension School. His blues history seminar at Harvard Extension ran for 11 years, beginning in 2003 with B.B. King as the guest performer. B.B. fielded questions from an audience of over 400 people, which were caught by Harvard cameraman Chris Mehl. B.B. King at Harvard. Sawyer's software career began in 1984 with Computervision and finished in 2015 at Google. Sawyer was a consultant for the B.B. King Museum. He is the author of The Arrival of B.B. King (Doubleday, 1980), the first authorized biography of blues guitarist and vocalist B.B. King, as well as From Indianola to Icon: A Personal Odyssey with the King of the Blues (Schiffer Publishing 2022). Photo by A’Davion Bush
