B.B. King wsg Robert Cray Band

Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and blues legend B.B. King with special guest, five-time Grammy Award winner The Robert Cray Band, will perform at DTE Energy Music Theatre on Wednesday, August 19 at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets at $49.50 and $35 pavilion and $10 lawn are on sale now at Palacenet.com, The Palace Box Office and all Ticketmaster locations.

Tickets may also be charged by phone to American Express, Discover, Visa and MasterCard by calling 1-800-745-3000.

For more than 60 years, Riley B. King - better known as B.B. King - has defined the blues for a worldwide audience. Since he started recording in the 1940s, he has released more than 50 albums, many of them classics, won 14 Grammy Awards, been inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of the Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the NARM (National Association of Recording Merchandisers) Chairman’s Award, among many other awards. In a special ceremony at the Library of Congress, Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington presented King with a “Living Legend” medal in honor of his achievements as a musician and ambassador for the blues.

Last year, the “King of the Blues” released a new album entitled One Kind Favor, which features covers of old blues songs from his early influences. The set revisits the music that influenced B.B. in the 1950s, the beginning of his extraordinary professional journey which literally changed the texture of modern blues playing.

In September 2008, King presided at the opening of the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in his hometown of Indianola, Mississippi. Also in September, he began hosting his own weekly radio show on XM Radio on their newly re-launched blues channel “BB Kings Bluesville” (XM 74).

After 10,000 concerts, King continues to bring his music to audiences around the globe spending the better part of each year on the road with his beloved guitar, “Lucille.”

The Robert Cray Band was born in the misty Northwest in 1974, a group of young men so dedicated to playing that they would hitchhike from Eugene to Portland, Oregon in the pouring rain just to rehearse.

In the early 1980s, The Robert Cray Band branched out from Portland and Eugene to Seattle, Washington and the San Francisco Bay Area with their sizzling update of blues and soul. Within 10 years of their debut, the band moved from playing seedy bars to performing at Carnegie Hall.

A quarter of a century later, The Robert Cray Band has earned a double-platinum and two gold albums, 11 Grammy nominations and five Grammy Awards.

Cray’s collaborations include recordings with Tina Turner, John Lee Hooker, Bonnie Raitt, Keb’ Mo’, B.B. King and Eric Clapton and he has performed on stages with such legendary artists as The Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry.

The chart-topping blues album, Live from Across the Pond (2006), found him and his band performing live over seven nights in May 2005 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Live at the BBC (2008), the band’s latest release which peaked at number seven on the Billboard Top Blue Albums chart, is selection of recorded pieces from the band’s 1988 and 1991 performances at Hammersmith Odeon in London, England.

Robert Cray's current band line-up is Tony Braunagel (drums), Jim Pugh (keyboards) and Richard Cousins (bass guitar).

B.B. King with special guest the Robert Cray Band is part of the Belle Tire Concert Series.