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The king of blues has died. RIP B.B. King

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MacNut

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Jan 4, 2002
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Singer-guitarist B.B. King, the “King of the Blues” who helped define his genre’s electrified postwar sound and became the music’s best-known international ambassador, has died. He was 89. His attorney said he died Thursday in Las Vegas.

“King’s is now the name most synonymous with the blues, much as Louis Armstrong’s once was with jazz,” critic Francis Davis wrote in “The History of the Blues” (1995). “You don’t have to be a blues fan to have heard of King.” He was a star in music for 60 years, and his fame grew exponentially over that time.

From the late ’40s to the late ’60s, King developed his style before exclusively black audiences on the Southern “chitlin circuit” and initially won stardom with a series of authoritative R&B hits backed by brawny big bands on the Modern and ABC labels.

He lifted blues guitar playing to a new level of virtuosity on those recordings. Masterfully synthesizing divergent streams of blues and jazz on his instrument — the Gibson ES-355 he lovingly dubbed “Lucille” — he fused the approaches of such sophisticated precursors as Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Lonnie Johnson and T-Bone Walker into a fluid, hotwired attack all his own.

His forceful yet elegant single-string picking and roaring, emotion-packed singing won him devotees like the white blues-rock guitarists Michael Bloomfield, Steve Miller and Eric Clapton, who helped introduce him to a youthful new audience in the late ’60s. By the end of the decade, he had released a top-20 pop hit, “The Thrill Is Gone,” and was on the way to becoming an icon whose renown transcended his art’s humble origins in the Deep South.

Born Riley B. King in Berclair, Miss., he took up the guitar at age 12. As a boy, he picked cotton and later, in nearby Indianola, he labored as a tractor driver for $22.50 a week.

Like many bluesmen, he got his start singing gospel, but as a teen he was drawn to the accomplished Lonnie Johnson, among the most fluent of pre-war blues guitarists. He also became more deeply involved in the music through his cousin Bukka White, an ex-convict and brilliant blues singer who had recorded for Victor and Vocalion.

Following a brief stint in the Army during WWII, King returned to farming, but after a 1946 accident in which he totaled a tractor, he fled with his guitar to nearby Memphis, where he lived with White and began to hone his professional chops.
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http://variety.com/2015/music/news/blues-legend-b-b-king-dies-at-89-1201496991/
 
rocknblogger said:
Truly a legend. Saw him live once many years ago. Now I'm sad I've waited too long to see him again:(. R.I.P
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A privilege that you were blessed to have experienced.

A true legend and a towering colossus in the history and development of modern popular music. R.I.P. B. B. King.

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rocknblogger said:
Truly a legend. Saw him live once many years ago. Now I'm sad I've waited too long to see him again:(. R.I.P
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oldhifi said:
A ledgen great blues player:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/arts/music/b-b-king-blues-singer-dies-at-89.html?_r=0
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Thanks for taking the trouble to post and link this.
 
Thank you B.B. for always making such wonderful music. I'll spin Live at the Regal tonight like I always do and I'll think of all the times you and your music were there for me.
 
He also influenced The Strolling Ruins and Zed Leprosy, sorry, that should be The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin LOL
 
Saw him play in the late '70s. It was a very small venue-- a dance floor with him playing off to the side. I was standing right in front of him about 3 feet away. So energetic, he blew me away.
 
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