About six years ago, when in his mid-70s, Charlie Sawyer began sifting through his old photos.

The Concord native had retired from his software career, most recently as a programmer at Google’s Cambridge office, and finally, after more than 30 years, it was time to revisit the life he’d lived as a journalist, photographer, and biographer.

“It was a bit overwhelming. For a 15-year period, as a young man, I was as fully invested in my photography as any human can be,” Sawyer said via phone last week. “I had in this archive every photo I ever took. It was waiting for my attention.”

Some photos in this archive were of his then-colleagues at New England College. Others were snapshots of the Hopkinton State Fair. A large number featured the great American blues artist B.B. King, who Sawyer befriended in the 1960s at a small nightclub called Lennie’s on the Turnpike in Peabody, Mass. Their professional relationship would culminate with his writing the blues artist’s biography, The Arrival of B.B. King: The Authorized Biography, in 1980.

Slowly, Sawyer marched through the images, organized them in big plastic tubs, and built a digital photography studio in his home in Boxford, Mass. He began scanning. And when he finally got to King, he found more than 3,000 photos taken during that period.

“All these years later, when I began a serious investigation of my photo archive, I realized that for every photo I put in the first biography, there were several complimentary photographs,” Sawyer said.

He packaged the images and sent them to the B.B. King Museum in Mississippi, which were so well-received, he was summoned to travel south and discuss publishing a B.B. King photo book.

Sawyer was interested. Why not? He had the time. Plus, working on this project enabled him to relive this exciting time in his life, when he was the man behind the curtain to one of the country’s most prolific blues musicians.

“In a way, the pandemic kind of passed me by. Since I was retired, I didn’t have colleagues to connect with. I didn’t have an office to stay away from. My office was my study, and my work was my photography archive and this book,” he said.

As King’s biographer, Sawyer was granted access to accompany the artist wherever he wanted, from the dressing room to the after-party, which once included a nightclub jam session with James Cotton and Paul Butterfield.

“He welcomed me, and granted me a kind of access and intimacy which was unthinkable to me, especially coming from a state that had no African American culture,” Sawyer said. “How could I, a farm boy from New Hampshire, imagine entering the world that B.B. King grew up in?”

Though Sawyer would write for high-profile publications, including The New York Times and Harper’s Magazine, he eventually found work as a “stringer” was not supporting the life he wanted to build, which is when he switched careers and entered the software industry.

But even in Sawyer’s new career, King was present, acting as a special guest during a course Sawyer taught, “History of the Blues,” at Harvard Extension School in 2003. At the end of the presentation, at Sawyer’s request, King invited him onstage to perform with the band.

“I had an awareness that this whole evening was a great event in my life,” Sawyer said. “We played a couple of tunes, and he was very gracious about it. After we finished the song, I leaned over, pulled on his sleeve, and said, ‘Tell me you’re not a little bit surprised.’”

Sawyer’s work during the pandemic culminated in the publication of a coffee table picture book, B.B. King: From Indianola to Icon: A Personal Odyssey with the ‘King of the Blues,’ published by Schiffer, the originals of which are on view in a photography exhibition at Kimball Jenkins until Feb. 17.

The show in Concord features more than 60 photographs of King, plus other musical greats Sawyer photographed during his time as a journalist, including Tony Bennett, Muddy Waters, Little Richard, and Big Mama Thornton.

This Thursday, Sawyer visits the mansion for a free concert featuring his band, 2120 S. Michigan Ave., and an artist talk from 7 to 9 p.m. in partnership with the Concord Historical Society.

The talk will cover Sawyer’s friendship with King and chronicle Sawyer’s time growing up in Concord. He’ll tell stories of his childhood, including the time he met American politician Estes Kefauver when he was 10 years old, and discuss some of the other photos he found in his archive, including the ones that depict his family.

Sawyer says his aunts and uncles in particular were embedded in Concord’s history. One was the town’s milkman. Another founded an elementary school in town. He says revisiting these old images has provided him with a great deal of clarity.

“Everybody has a life story. And everybody who’s lucky enough to live to be old – I was, after all, born before the U.S. entered World War II – can ask the question, how did I get here?” Sawyer said.

They’ve also helped him unlock details in his memories. In Sawyer’s home hangs a photo of his parents standing out in front of the family farm. The photo itself is black and white, but recently, Sawyer began to see it in color.

“It’s black and white. But then I realized the other day that now I see my mother’s dress is blue, because it was. And I see the door behind them is green – because it was. And looking at these photos brings up a memory of mine that is so rich. How  does it feel? I’ll give you one word. Unnerving,” Sawyer said.

]]>