B.B. King’s Toyota commercial, titled “Guitar,” was the last public marketing appearance the beloved blues master made before his passing. In the commercial, a woman purchases a guitar at an auction and discovers that it’s one of King’s iconic Lucille Gibson guitars. She drives in a Toyota Camry to meet him backstage and reunites him with the guitar, which he then autographs and gives to her. Sounds like an awesome, too good to be true story for real life, but this seemingly fictitious plotline is actually based on a true story.

As you may know, B.B. King named many of his guitars Lucille, a moniker based on the name of a woman who two men fought over at a juke joint where B.B. had performed; the fight resulted in the club catching fire and B.B. had to run in to save his guitar from the flames. On his 80th birthday in 2005, Gibson Guitars customized a semi-hollowbody ES-355 prototype for King with the name Lucille inlaid. King played it until it was stolen from his Las Vegas home in 2009.

Numerous commemorative 80th birthday guitars had been produced for sale to the public following 2005, so when a collector and guitar player named Eric Dahl found a Lucille guitar in a pawn shop, he and the pawn shop owner had no clue that it was B.B. King’s stolen guitar. Dahl later found the word “prototype” on the instrument and had Gibson verify that it was indeed the very first prototype of those 80th birthday guitars, the one that had been given to King.

In the fall of 2009, Dahl set up a meeting to reunite King with his stolen guitar and honorably didn’t ask for any financial reward. Unlike the Toyota “Guitar” commercial, King didn’t give Dahl the guitar, but he did arrange to have Gibson give Dahl a commemorative Lucille guitar, which King autographed.

Categories: News, New Inventory