INDIANOLA, Miss. (AP) — Blues pioneer B.B. King is being remembered in the Mississippi Delta as a man whose talent was equaled by his generous spirit.

King's funeral is Saturday in Indianola — the small town where he first gained attention as a young singer and guitarist who had already been a sharecropper and worked in a cotton gin.

President Barack Obama, in a letter to be read at the funeral service Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, called King an inspiration to blues lovers everywhere and to up-and-coming artists.

"The blues has lost its king and American has lost a legend.

"No one worked harder that B.B. No one did more to spread the gospel of the blues. He gets stuck in your head, he gets you moving, he gets you doing the things you probably shouldn't do — but will always be glad you did.

"B.B. may be gone but that thrill will be with us forever. And there's going to be one killer blues session in heaven tonight," read Obama's letter.

Thompson was also to read a letter from former President Bill Clinton. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant also was scheduled to make remarks.

King was 89 when he died May 14 at his home in Las Vegas. More than 4,000 people viewed his open casket Friday at the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola.

One of his sons, Willie King of Chicago, said his father taught him to respond with love when others are angry.

"For a man coming out of the cotton field unlearned and you take his music and draw four corners of the world together — that is amazing," Willie King said Friday at the museum, where his father will be buried.

King's public viewing Friday was almost like a state funeral, with Mississippi Highway Patrol officers in dress uniform standing at each end of the casket. Two of his black electric guitars — each named Lucille — stood among sprays of flowers.

Blues guitarist Buddy Guy, 78, said he always intended to tour the B.B. King Museum while its namesake, his longtime friend, was still living.

"His left hand was a special effect," Guy said, describing King's talent for bending strings to make the guitar sing.

"These young people playing, you punch a button and you get a vibration," Guy said. "He didn't need that. He invented that."

Mike Doster of Nashville played bass in King's band for 17 years and said King nicknamed him "Mighty Mike."

"He was very demanding but very fair," Doster said Friday as he waited for King's casket to be wheeled out of the museum after the public viewing in Indianola.

A public viewing and invitation-only memorial service were held in Las Vegas before King's body was flown to Memphis, Tennessee, for a tribute Wednesday.