In BB King Discovered aspiring rock musicians a profound emotional expression that lacked the other great influence of the era, Chuck Berry. With his admirable work ethic, his brisk clothes and his positive attitude, King converted the roughest rural elements of the blues into an optimistic urbanity.
BB King was both a great entertainer and a real person. Modest and with a refreshing sense of humor. Funded early by Paul Butterfield and Eric Clapton, King found after the publication of Live at the shelf In 1964 the audience he deserved.
He made the blues a practical way to make a living on stage. Here are ten acts – rock, blues and beyond – that followed his example and continued. (See also King’s 10 essential songs and our definitive profile of 1998, On the bus with BB King.)
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Jimi Hendrix BB King’s urban blues sucked up as an insatiable musical swam. Just like a large number of aggressive stylists. Hendrix covered “Every Day I Have the Blues” as a member of the Rocking Kings at the beginning of his career. And was known for turning on the bass on his amplifier to imitate King, which he asked for tips when meeting on the touring tour.
Little Richard, with whom Hendrix played for several months, even criticized Hendrix for the fact that he too much like King Klinge. With his own trio, Hendrix BBS Sound by introducing King’s “Rock Me Baby”. He then took the experience in a completely different wild direction. But “Hey Joe”, the hit single of the trio Are you experience, Is unimaginable for the single string without King’s inspiration. And Hendrix ‘in unison played guitar and vocal work in “Voodoo Chile” is directly from King’s game book.
Cream
BB King, wrote Eric Clapton in his autobiography, is “without a doubt the most important artist that the blues has ever produced”. The man who brought the electric blues into the masses was suitable for King’s vocabulary during his time with the Yardbirds and John Mayalls Bluesbreakers. Mayall hired him especially because of his similarity.
As a member of Cream, Clapton Jack Bruce left the lion’s share of the songwriting and instead brought a handful of delicious blues cover versions into the trio. Clapton accelerated Kings Licks. And gave them a loud, flowing psychedelic touch on his Marshall amplifiers. His soulful sound in blind faith approached that of King, with whom he had played unforgettable jam sessions in 1967 in New York Cafe Au Go Go. The two blues musicians finally worked in 2000 Riding with the King together.
Santana
Even ten -year -old Carlos Santana was under the influence of BB King when he heard him in Tijuana on the radio. “I thought: ‘Man, that’s it. That is the kind of music that I want to do when I’m big, ‘”he recalls. And when he saw King for the first time after moving to San Francisco in Bill Graham’s Fillmore West, it was a ‘revelation’.
When King hit the first tone that evening, says Santana: ‘It was as if a completely different world had opened up. I thought: ‘Oh, that’s how he does it. You go within yourself. And comes out with this sound. ” Carlos Santana Blues Band, founded in 1967, interpreted BB-King songs in Latin-Rock style. Santana writes the album Spellbinder of the Hungarian jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó to have helped him to escape King’s spell. Albeit never.
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Mike Bloomfield was one of the first instrumental superstar of rock, whose blues-guitar style was largely adopted by BB King. “”[W]If I play blues guitar really well-then I don’t just play for fun. But I’m really deepened in something. Then BB King is very similar, ”he said.
Bloomfield earned his spores in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and wrote rock story as the guitarist who “electrified” Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. (“I don’t want anything from the BB-King shit, man,” Dylan said to him in the recordings Highway 61 revisited.) Bloomfield moved to San Francisco and founded the short -lived band Electric Flag in 1967. When Bloomfield snapped his guitar aside a few years later and fell into the abyss of heroine, it was BB who got him out and pleaded: “You can’t allow what you have, so hell.”
The Allman Brothers band
BB King was part of the program at the first rock show that the teenage duans and Gregg Allman from Florida visited. “Little brother,” said Duane to Gregg, “we have to pull that in.” In the event of recordings as Hour Glass in the Fame Studio in Muscle Shoals in 1969, Gregg and Duane “Sweet Little Angel”, “It’s My Own Fault” and “How Blue Can You Get” from King’s 1964 album Live at the shelf To the “BB King Medley”. Duane acquired King’s bows and sustains unabashedly.
The influence of shelf On the extensive double concerts of the Allman Brothers band. Live at the shelf, says Gregg Allman in One Way Out“It’s like a single long song, a huge medley. [King] never stopped. He just started. ” Plates like shelfso allman, “made me make everything so meticulously – pay attention to the arrangements, to the order of the songs.”
Johnny Winter
For fiery Johnny Winter, BB King was nothing less than a “blues saint”. The first album that bought winter was King’s LP published in 1957 Singin ‘The Blues. Three years later, he attached great importance to jaming with his idol in the Raven Club in his hometown Beaumont, Texas.
Johnny, his brother Edgar and a few friends were the only white in the club, so King, who had tax problems, assumed that they were from the Internal Revenue Service. Winters forced him to show his union ID before he had it played along.
“We’ll see you later,” said King after the set. Winter’s big breakthrough came in 1968 when he played Kings ‘it’s my own fault’ during a ‘super session’ in the Fillmore East with Al Cooper and Mike Bloomfield. A few days later, Winters reported that the biggest advance in the history of the music recordings of Columbia Records received.
Fleetwood Mac
In 1966 the BB-King fan Peter Green John Mayalls joined Bluesbreakers to replace the King fan Eric Clapton. The following year, Green and the rhythm group of bluesbreakers left – Mick Fleetwood and John McVie – The band and founded Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. A group that was strongly characterized by the blues, which was to become a pop superstar after Green’s exit in 1970.
In Fleetwood Mac, Green showed an excellent form with instrumentals such as “Albatross” and blues cover versions, in particular an unpublished version of King’s “I’ve Got a Mind To Give Up Living”. King, who was on tour with Fleetwood Mac for a week, later said about Green: “He has the sweetest tone I’ve ever heard. He was the only one who gave me cold sweats. “
ZZ top
The guitar hero of the arena rock Billy Gibbons was so enthusiastic about BB King that he named his band after him. So to speak. When Gibbons looked at the walls of his apartment in Houston in 1969, he saw poster with King and ZZ Hill. He liked the parts with ZZ and King, but not so much together. But then he asked himself: Isn’t a king the top? King also inspired Gibbons to switch to thin “Slinky Seven” strings when the older guitarist, as he said, accidentally took a guitar in my hand, which I had opened with a blatant, heavy wire in the corner, and asked: “Why do you work so hard?”
When King 2011 the sixth place on the list of 100 largest guitarists in the Rolling Stone Dated, wrote Gibbons: “He invented this one, in a nutshell, in which he plays two notes. Then jump to another string. And glides into a grade. I can do that now. And then there is this two- or three-way number, in which he pretends the last note. Both figures always get you moving. “
Stevie and Jimmie Ray Vaughan
Jimmie Vaughans relatively straightforward, but emotionally fulfilling guitar style, which ranges from his days at the Fabulous Thunderbirds to his later solo career, was largely influenced by BB King’s work in the 1950s and early sixties. “When I had some money for the first time,” said Jimmie, “I went to the record store. I bought all albums from BB King. ” Jimmie and Albert King had the greatest musical influence on his younger brother Stevie Ray Vaughan, whose swinging virtuosity was supposed to trigger another American blues repetition.
Stevie Ray’s death in a helicopter crash in 1990 “devastated” BB King, who said that he felt “as if I got part of myself” through the tragedy. He added: “The world lost the man who was determined to become the greatest guitarist in the history of the blues.”
Robert Cray
In the 80s and 90s, Robert Cray was widely regarded as BB King’s heir to the throne in the blues. His hit album Strong Persuader From 1986 he made him known as a gentle but cheeky singer, who was popular with both men and women. And embodies his economical but elegant guitar game King’s sophisticated sensitivity.
Cray’s popularity was largely due to his friendliness. A property that he shares with King. Of course, he admires King both as a musician and as a person. “BB King is a gentleman, he speaks in a elegant way,” says Cray, who noticed on another occasion that King was “the nicest man on the planet”. Cray may be too pop for some blues fans. But BB King is by no means a stranger to the charts.