B.B. King the world's greatest blues singer's kids are still fighting
ovet the money they think he had and may have had. His manager claims
that it isn't as much as people think. The problem is, she could be
right. BB King should have hundreds of millions of dollars left behind,
but Black artists were cheated so badly in the early days it just may
not be there. Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Bobby Womack are examples of
Black artists who made hundreds of millions of dollars but were ripped
off by white managers and white corporations. Even James Brown and Bob
Marley can tell this tale . It's only aftr the Prince's and Michael
Jackson's came along did Black artists start getting a good share of
their profits. I am suspicious of this manager of BB King's but if she
has stolen money it's his children's fault. There is enough of them that
somebody should have went to school and got a degree in business so
they could manage their father's career instead of waiting around for
him to give them some money!! Why didn't they invest in businesses or
start their own careers instead of sitting on their asses waiting for a
handout! If she does makes off with all of the money, serves their lazy
asses right!
B.B. King's Estate War: 15 Kids, 15 Moms and a "Totally Haywire" Fight
The
King of the Blues never contested claims from women during his decades
of touring who came forward saying he was the father of their babies —
even though a low sperm count made it highly unlikely. Now, a year after
his death, as memories of a loving, generous parent slip away, his
descendants go to war in court.
When bluesman B.B. King died last
year, he bequeathed to the world a body of work spanning six decades
that brought joy and comfort to millions. The crooner of "The Thrill Is
Gone" and "Sweet Sixteen" transformed American music, inspiring such
rockers as Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson and Buddy Guy. King was 89 when
he succumbed to congestive heart failure in his Las Vegas home and died
peacefully in his sleep on May 14, 2015.
The year since then has
been decidedly less peaceful. While neither of King's two marriages
resulted in children, he managed to leave behind a vast family: 15 kids
from 15 women. If that family history weren't complex enough, King's
authorized biographer Charles Sawyer wrote in his book, The Arrival of BB King, that doctors found the musician's sperm count too low to conceive children. In 2015, Sawyer told The Guardian
that he had given King the option to remove the reference and that King
declined. Either way, King claimed 15 kids as his own — never disputing
his paternity — and of the 11 who survive, many now are fighting with
King's appointed trustee over his estate, a fortune that family members
tell THR could be worth between $30 million and $40 million
when royalties, asset sales and rights are taken into account. Many of
the kids point to a 2007 will and trust that they claim grant them
generous allowances. But King's longtime business manager, LaVerne
Toney, who is now the legal trustee of King's estate, asserts that she
merely is following a 2014 trust, which names the children but doesn't
provide for them with specific monetary gifts. According to the
trustee's own legal filings in Nevada, King's estate also is far smaller
than the children allege: $5 million and change spread across a few
Wells Fargo bank accounts. But the kids have assembled teams of lawyers
to fight the estate's guardians. The litigation could continue for
years.
While the value of King's estate is the subject of great
contention, observers say it hardly is a case like Michael Jackson's
estate, which has gone up in value roughly $1 billion since the
enigmatic singer's death. In King's case, he wrote few of his hits, sold
records for decades to a segregated America and made deals at a time in
which black artists were hardly paid handsomely. According to analysis
conducted for this story by Billboard, King's publishing and
recording assets — including his catalog — are valued at roughly $7
million to $8 million, based on Nielsen Music data and consultation with
a financial executive who buys publishing and master recording
catalogs.
Members of King’s family, from left: Willie King, Tanya Deckard, Patty
King, Karen Williams, Barbara King and Rita Washington after a family
viewing at a Las Vegas funeral home on May 21, 2015.
By all
accounts, King loved each of his kids dearly and, while alive,
generously offered financial help. He bankrolled college tuitions,
visited children in prison and set up trust funds. But the equilibrium
he maintained in his family, balancing a frantic touring schedule — he
often played upward of 200 gigs a year — with the needs of his clan,
collapsed when he died. THR has learned that since his death,
three more people have surfaced, claiming King was their father, too.
"My dad told us, 'Even when I'm gone, I'm gonna take care of you.' But
we haven't received a dime since he died," says Riley B. King, B.B.'s
son, 67. "We got a lawyer, and we are trying to fight and get what
belongs to us."
The legal fight began within weeks of King's
death. Then a few children went public with a stunning allegation: Toney
and King's personal assistant, Myron Johnson, had fatally poisoned
King. The accusers had no hard evidence, but investigators ordered an
autopsy report. Police found nothing to support the allegations, and the
suit was dismissed. Johnson then sued the accusing family members
(including his own sister, Karen Williams) for defamation; the outcome
still is pending. These accusations split the family, one side fueling
toxic innuendo about King's fate, the other wincing at the resulting
tabloid headlines. Since then, several children have pursued lawsuits
targeting King's music estate, which remains in dispute. "I saw him work
all his life to take care of the family, and that's what it should have
stayed like," says Shirley King, his eldest daughter. "It got really
bad before he left this earth, and then it just went totally haywire."
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B.B. King and His Family in Pictures
•••
The son of sharecroppers, King was raised by his
grandmother on a cotton plantation near Indianola, Miss. His career was
extraordinary — he won 15 Grammys, was inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame and sang for President Obama at the White House. Yet the
so-called King of the Blues maintained a modest lifestyle, traveling on a
tour bus and staying at inexpensive hotels.
That this estate
battle has descended into chaos might partly be because of King's broad
concept of family. Humble and full of good cheer, not to mention
talented and famous, King had no shortage of female companions. "That
was a good-looking man," says Shirley. "You spend that much time being
that good-looking, you can get any woman you want." Thousands of gigs
over the years led to countless dalliances from which his children — or
people who claimed to be his children — sprang. "Every time my dad got
more famous, I found out about a new sister," says Shirley. "I was happy
at first, and then nobody gets along, and I stopped being happy."
B.B.'s youngest daughter, Barbara, a hairdresser in Texas who says she's
"between 40 and 60," says her mother hooked up with King when he was
passing through Shreveport, La., for a gig: "He was coming through town,
and here I am."
King’s longtime business manager, Toney (center), entered a Las Vegas courtroom shortly before King’s death in May 2015.
Most
of the children's parenthood stories resemble this. If a woman told him
a child was his, King took her word for it and never looked back. He
remained friendly with many of his children's mothers. "It didn't matter
how we got to be a family, it was that we were a family," says Barbara.
"He made sure we knew he loved us."
Spread thin between his work
and his dispersed family, King still made time for his children. His son
and namesake Riley B. King, who did a five-year stint in prison during
the early 2000s for dealing drugs, says B.B. visited him three times
behind bars. When the two met, father and son would always kiss on the
lips. "People looked at us strange, two men kissing," says Riley, "But
he'd say, 'I love you.' He never missed a birthday. He never missed a
Christmas. We were tight." Barbara King remembers a hard-working but
fun-loving dad who loved watching Westerns, eating soul food and
cheating at his favorite card game, spades. Even children who saw him
intermittently, like Claudette Robinson King, a singer herself, recall
B.B. as being generous with his finances and his good name. "He said,
'Show the gift that God has given you and remember you're B.B King's
daughter,' " she says. "The name means a lot; it opens doors for me."
As
King got older and his health deteriorated, he began to moderate his
generosity, according to his grandson Christopher, a former Marine who
now works as a motivational speaker and entrepreneur. As a kid, he
remembers watching King count out $180,000 in cash on a hotel bed, some
of which he then doled out to family members who needed it. Christopher
says that King wasn't immune to the pain that bickering within the
family caused him. "It upset him sometimes," he says. "He would say:
'It's family, son, period. We gotta take care of the family.' "
Rita Washington (left), one of King’s 15 children, left his funeral on May 23, 2015.
A
diabetic, King began to suffer from hypertension and arthritis. In
2007, he signed over control of his medical care to Toney, who'd worked
by his side for 40 years. Four years later, he gave Toney control over
his business affairs and power of attorney. To Christopher, King began
to worry more about his musical estate's future. "There've been times
when he told me, 'Those that have eaten while I live will not eat when
I'm gone,' " says Christopher. "He was cutting things off little by
little as he got older; he knew he wanted his estate to be flourishing
after he was gone."
Exactly how King wanted his estate divided now is the subject
of ongoing lawsuits. Shortly before his death, Karen Williams filed a
motion in a Las Vegas court to have herself named as her father's legal
guardian, replacing Toney. In her suit, Williams alleged that Toney and
Myron Johnson had abused their positions as King's confidants, resulting
in King's diminished physical condition, the disappearance of hundreds
of thousands of dollars and the theft of personal belongings from one of
King's storage facilities. A suit brought by Williams asserted that
Toney had been "taking Mr. King's assets for her own use or for the use
of her family," according to publicly available documents. The suit also
alleged that Toney was neglecting King medically, stealing money from
his accounts and preventing family from seeing King. The allegations
resulted in two investigations, by the Las Vegas Police Department and
the city's Aging and Disability Services Division. Both found no such
wrongdoing and rejected Williams' claims outright.
Half sisters Patty King (left) and Karen Williams hired attorney
Benjamin Crump (center) and made allegations that their father had been
poisoned.
Meanwhile, Eric Brent Bryson, an attorney
representing Toney, uncovered a publicly available birth certificate
showing that Williams was not biologically related to King at all.
(Williams didn't respond to requests for an interview.) And Myron
Johnson signed a sworn affidavit in support of Toney and against his
sister's allegations. According to court documents, Johnson told the
court that he had "personal knowledge that Karen Williams personally has
previously manipulated Mr. King into giving her money." In court,
Bryson produced affidavits from King's personal physician and dentist
stating that Toney and Johnson always looked out for King's best
interests. "LaVerne denies any type of wrongdoing, and the children were
never able to prove any type of wrongdoing," says Bryson. As for the
allegation about goods stolen out of King's storage facility, Toney
conceded that there was a theft but told the court that King had
insisted she not file a police report because he thought members of his
family might have been responsible.
Some siblings are chagrined
with Karen's tactics. "How are you gonna accuse somebody of murder with
no proof?" asks Christopher. In recent months, however, others have
joined forces to fight Toney because they say King would have wanted his
family taken better care of, especially financially. "LaVerne and Myron
are controlling everything," says Shirley. "They're fighting some of
the kids with my dad's money — how stupid is that?" Adds Barbara: "The
poisoning thing? Yeah, that was a rough time, there was a lot of hurt,
but that situation will be cleared up in the end. We all support and
love each other." Even Christopher, who says he has no beef with Toney,
wants to see the value of the trust revisited. "Five million is nowhere
near what he's worth."
Williams and Patty King touched their father’s hearse in Memphis on May 27, 2015.
•••
All
this chaos has achieved what King apparently tried so hard to avoid: It
"split the family," according to B.B.'s son Riley. One group has banded
together into what Riley and others call a "committee" that they formed
to fight Toney in court. Riley says there are at least "four factions"
fighting with Toney over the estate in various lawsuits (all filed in
Nevada). James King, B.B.'s nephew, says that the fight has broken down
along geographic lines, with an "L.A. crew" mostly backing Toney against
a "Vegas crew" opposing her. Says Riley, "Even though we have different
lawyers, they're corresponding together, working together to put as
much paperwork on LaVerne as they can."
All of which may be a sign
that siblings and family members think Toney will have to cede ground.
Bryson says that Toney, as the "personal representative" of King's
estate, is dutifully carrying out the orders of his last and final will.
Some family members say that King had not one will but two. And of the
two recognized trusts, it remains unclear which one will hold sway in a
court of law. Estate jurisprudence generally holds that the latest
document supersedes earlier versions. But the children say the 2014
trust is flawed because it was finalized when King was nearly blind and
suffering from Alzheimer's-related cognitive impairment and memory loss.
They want the earlier documents to be reviewed and, hopefully, honored.
The legal system may now be giving them a chance. Christopher
King claims that earlier this year a judge agreed to have the 2007 trust
reviewed by a court. "LaVerne got everything," complains Riley King.
"She stole everything." Bryson insists these claims are bogus. "The
children and grandchildren are angry because Mr. King chose not to leave
them a bunch of money," Bryson tells THR. "He gave them a lot
of money over the years and wanted whatever he had left [to] go to
[having] his great-, great-grandchildren educated." In any event, adds
Bryson, King's years of hard work resulted in far less of a fortune than
the kids hope: "It's not anywhere close to what some of the relatives
are asserting."
Shirley King performed at a Las Vegas concert honoring her father in May 2015.
Even
if the earlier documents are reviewed, some King children may still be
unhappy. Only some of his descendants are named in the 2007 trust,
according to King's grandson Christopher, who says he has viewed the
2007 documents. "I think it's very fair," he says, without specifying
exactly who or how many of the children are entitled to how much. "I
want the issue to go away," adds Christopher. "I want him to be able to
really rest in peace and for all of this to be over so we can move on
with other things."
Looking ahead, the possibility of more
claimants emerging can't be ruled out. Some of his kids say that the
King family drama is a cautionary tale. "Maybe if there wasn't so many
kids from so many different parents, it would have been different," says
Shirley. "But all of a sudden my dad was just a bank." Three people
have gotten in touch with Shirley in the past few months claiming a
familial relation: a 72-year-old man who told Shirley that B.B King had
sworn him to silence years ago, a claim she calls preposterous; a much
younger woman from Florida; and then a woman from Detroit who showed up
unexpectedly at a memorial service last year. The last woman apparently
had been trying to contact King for some time, even going so far as to
send him some legal paperwork to prove her claim. But she didn't get
far. King had the last word. "He said to send the paperwork back,"
recalls Shirley, "He wasn't taking no more kids on."
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