I love the music of BB King, have, since I was a teenager. I also happen to be indebted to some black people in New York who befriended me, and fed me, when I was down and out as a student in New York. All of this, plus a profound sense of the racism perpetrated on blacks in America,  made me determined to open the eyes of readers of The Irish Times to such subjects in 1993. Incidentally, I met BB in Dublin and he joked "I thought any guy with a name like 'Joe Jackson' was going to be black!" This is a fun and one of my fave phone interviews with a hero of mine