The 250 best guitarists of all time – 8th place: BB King
The “Ambassador of the Blues” was such a beloved figure of American music that it is easy to forget how revolutionary his guitar work was. As Buddy Guy said: “Before BB King everyone played the guitar as if it were an acoustic one”. King made his famous Gibson “Lucille” cry like a real woman.
From the first tones of his 1951 breakthrough “Three O’Clock Blues” you can hear your innovative, flowing style. BB King’s string and vibrato came from his idol T-Bone Walker, but he led everything in a new direction and changed the way everyone else played. “Every electric guitarist who listens has a little bit of BB,” says Guy. “He was the father of the string of the strings on the electric guitar.”
BB King grew up on a plantation in the Mississippi Delta, picked cotton and learned the country blues from his cousin Bukka White. In 1948 he went to Memphis, where he became a radio DJ and developed his eclectic blues style with a gospel fire and jazz finesse. His “Live at the Regal” from 1965 is still one of the hottest guitar concerts of all time. But King did not let himself be kept down, toured until late eighties and held on Lucille as the love of his life. “Lucille doesn’t want to play anything other than the blues,” said King. “Lucille is real. When I play her, it’s almost like hearing words, and of course I also hear screams.”
Key tracks: “Every Day I have the blues”, “Sweet Sixteen”, “The Thrill is Gone” ”
We reported on the BB Kings death in 2015:
He was one of the most influential blues musicians ever. His hoarse voice and the vibrato of his guitar defined the genre, from Keith Richards to Buddy Guy, thousands of musicians tried to imitate him.
“He is undoubtedly the most important artist the blues brought up”wrote Eric Clapton in his biography, “And also the most modest and sincere person you can imagine.”
BB King was always there with all my heart
Regardless of whether it was about food, women (supposedly he had 15 children with 15 different women) or gave way to gambling (in 1975 he even moved to Las Vegas): King didn’t do anything half -heartedly. The bluesman could also not show anything musically.
Years later, Bono remembered her joint duet “When Love Comes to Town” from 1988: “I really gave everything at the beginning of the song. And then BB King opened his mouth and I suddenly felt like a little girl. We all learned from him, absorbed his style, but the more we tried to sound how BB sounded, the less convincing.”
At 17 he married
BB King was born on September 16, 1925 as Riley B. King in Itta Bena, Mississippi. His young parents divorced when he was only five. His mother died four years later and Riley came to his grandmother. He left the school early (which did not change the fact that he was interested in math and languages all his life) and tied as a cotton picker.
At 17 he married. “I guess I was looking for love because I thought that there was no one who really brought me sincere affection”He told the Rolling Stone in an interview in 1988.
It was the first of two failed marriages. “I have had a problem opening since my childhood. Please help me open! Look inside! I can’t, I don’t know how to do it.”
Dance event in Arkansas
From 1948 BB King earned his money in Memphis as a tractor driver. By chance he ended up in the radio broadcast of Sonny Boy Williamson, which in turn brought him an engagement in a speluna in West Memphis, where he played the blues six days a week.
He met artists such as Louis Jordan and T-Bone Walker-and heard the sound of an electric guitar for the first time. “T-Bone was the sound of heaven for me”he remembered years later.
One night in 1949, King performed at a dance event in Arkansas when a fight for a woman named Lucille broke out between two men in the audience. In the course of the dispute, a kerosinent was knocked over and the club caught fire.
All those present left the building as soon as possible, only King ran back again to save his guitar. From then on he called his instrument Lucille, like any guitar that came into possession afterwards.
Lucille remained his great love
“When I play her, it almost sounds like she can speak and I often hear her cry. Sometimes a conversation seems to come about between us. She communicates me, she tries to tell me something”King once said.
BB King landed his first number one hit in 1951 with “3 O ‘Clock Blues.” The British bands of the 1960s also contributed to his good reputation, which King worshiped. Musicians like the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton made him known to a white audience. His biggest works are still his live albums, on which his masterful game and his show talent of the old school is transported with rousing.
King was on tour without 65 years
In the late 1960s, he teamed up with the manager Sid Seidenberg, who helped him bring his gambling addiction under control and brought him to the studio with more well-known producers. This resulted in hits like “Paid the Cost to Be the Boss” (1968), his razor-sharp social criticism “, why I sing the blues” (1969) or “Thrill is Gone” (in the original by Roy Hawkins from 1951), with which King won his first Grammy award in 1970.
In the 1970s, King recorded Platten with his old friend Bobby Bland. Stevie Wonder produced the song “To Know You Is To Love You” in 1973. King remained commercially successful. In 1991 his BB King’s Blues Club opened in Memphis. Soon the once armed musician had venues across the country, which he was able to visit regularly.
But the fans treat me like a king
Rolling-Stone author Gerri Hirshey already estimated in 1998 that BB King had to have played around 15,000 concerts. King spent over 65 years of “on the road”. Outside the stage, he always remained the likeable entertainer and joined concerts to the fans and the “Guitar Kids”, as he called them to chat.
In private, BB King was an enthusiastic reader and internet enthusiast who once taught a young reporter how best to convert vinyl albums to MP3. He said about the computer: “My god, I have no idea how I could live without the thing!”
In an interview with the Rolling Stone in 2013, he regretted that he would be slower with age: “But the fans treat me like a king. When I come on stage, they get up. I have never asked them to just do it. They have no idea how much that means to me.”