President Obama sings a duet of “Sweet Home Chicago” with BB King at the White House:
The backstory, from the White House pool report:
Pool was escorted into the East Room for "In Performance at The White House: Red, White and Blues" at 6:45pm...POTUS said the Blues helped lay the foundation for Rock n Roll, R&B and hip hop.
POTUS said the blues "Speaks to something universal."
"No one goes through life without both joy and pain, triumph and sorrow. Blues gets all that sometimes with just one lyric or one note," he said.
The music "teaches us that when we find ourselves at a crossroads, we don't shy away from our problems. We own them. We face up to them. We deal with them. We sing about them. We turn them into art."