The blues guitarist Riley “B.B.” King, who rose from the cotton fields of Mississippi to the pantheon of 20th-century musicians, will appear at the White House December 15 to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

President Bush also named nine other recipients of America’s highest civilian honor, including the historian and author David McCullough and ex-Soviet dissident and human rights activist Natan Sharansky. The baseball great John “Buck” O’Neil, a batting champion in the Negro Leagues before becoming the first black man to serve as a Major League coach, will be awarded the honor posthumously. O’Neil died in October at 94 after being denied a place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, where few who know the game would dispute he belongs.

“For more than half a century, the ‘King of the Blues’ and his guitar ‘Lucille’ have thrilled audiences, influenced generations of guitarists, and helped give the blues its special place in the American musical tradition,” Mr. Bush said of Mr. King in his proclamation last Thursday.

It couldn’t have been easy to learn how to play electric guitar growing up in a town with no electricity, but by the time Mr. King reached Chicago via Indianola, Miss., to play the Regal Theater in November 1964, he had spent 39 years mastering the instrument. Taking the stage that night with more than 20 charted singles under his portly belt and a veritable army of women dangling from the balconies, one might say he had pulled it off. The live album that came out of that performance, “Live at the Regal,” was a breathtaking slice of urban blues and helped introduce the guitarist to the American mainstream.

Between 1951 and 1985, Mr. King notched an incredible 74 songs on Billboard’s R&B charts.

Along the way, Mr. King played as large a role as any figure in the development of rock ‘n’ roll and the integration of blues music as an art form. At first, his brilliantly original style of soloing over blues chords found followers in future blues stars like Buddy Guy, Albert King, and Luther Allison, all of whom drew their own careers from Mr. King’s blueprint. But perhaps even more important, especially to the popular music revolution of the 1950s and ’60s, white guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Johnny Winter, and Stevie Ray Vaughan — all legends in their own right — might never have picked up their signature instruments if not for B.B. King.

Today, at age 81, Mr. King continues to tour the country relentlessly, as he has done for more than half his life. Last April, at his eponymous club on 42nd Street in Manhattan, he played the 10,000th concert of his career.

Also receiving the Medal of Freedom today are: the literacy advocate Ruth Johnson Colvin; Norman Francis, president of Xavier University of Louisiana; the historian and journalist Paul Johnson, a citizen of the United Kingdom; Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize winner for his work in bacterial genetics; Norman Mineta, the former transportation secretary; and William Safire, a former New York Times columnist.

Mr. Sharansky, a 58-year-old Ukranian Jew, was imprisoned in the former Soviet Union for his struggle to advance religious liberty and human rights. After serving as an English interpreter for Andrei Sakharov, he emerged in his own right as a foremost dissident and spokesman for the Soviet Jewry movement. After being arrested in 1977 and convicted in 1978 of treason and spying on behalf of America, he was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment.

President Truman established the Medal of Freedom in 1945 to recognize honorable wartime service. Eighteen years later, President Kennedy reintroduced the award as an honor for distinguished civilian service in peacetime.

Mr. Oshinsky wrote about B.B. King’s “Live at the Regal” for the book “1001 Albums You Must Have Before You Die,” published by Universe in February.