INDIANOLA, Miss. — The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center opened September 13 with a three-day celebration and an historic, Crest Audio-powered concert that paired the blues legend with several of the marquee artists he has inspired.
Tracing King’s journey from the fields of the Mississippi Delta to Beale Street and beyond, the museum displays a trove of memorabilia to illustrate the artist’s life and inspiration. Even the $15 million facility itself is part of the collection, built onto the cotton gin where King worked as a young man.
The 83-year-old King, who still performs more than 100 shows a year, headlined the celebration with a defining set of hits and standards featuring guest guitarists Robert Cray, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Keb ‘Mo. The main stage, provided by Nashville-based TMG Production Services, featured twin ground-stacked Peavey Versarray™ 212 line-array arrangements, configured with four Versarray 212 line arrays and two Versarray 218 subwoofers per side and powered by sixteen Crest Audio® Pro 9200™ amplifiers.
For the ribbon cutting celebration, the more compact Peavey Versarray 112 line array—four per side flown on Vermette lifts—powered by six Crest Audio Pro 8200™ amplifiers projected the voice-only event with precision and clarity. A Peavey VSX™ 26 loudspeaker manager handled system processing, with mixing accomplished on a Crest Audio XRM® rack-mountable console.
“The Crest Audio Pro 200™ Series amplifiers are excellent companions to the Versarray enclosures because they have no natural sound of their own,” he added. “A line array will bring out anything that the amplifier is doing, and the Pro 200 Series is known for not having artifacts.”