Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

top

World

B.B. King, King of the Blues, dies at 89

In 1949 he made his first six singles, and two years later hit paydirt with “Three O’Clock Blues.” It held the number one slot on the national rhythm and blues charts for 15 weeks.

He told interviewers he had always wanted to sing Gospel music, but it was blues that brought in money.

He developed his distinct style in the 1950s as he toured incessantly with his band. Charismatic, a natural entertainer, he wove stories from the poor south with tales and jokes from his love life, in between cracking blues numbers backed by a phalanx of Memphis horns.

His guitar playing focused not on speedy riffs, not on sweeping chords, but well-chosen, sharp single notes and long, aching bends. He never took up the slide guitar like most Delta bluesmen, but substituted with a vibrato from his left hand on the neck that rounded out his unique sound.

“By bending the strings, by trilling my hand — and I have big, fat hands — I could achieve something that approximated a vocal vibrato,” King said in his 1996 autobiography.

It made King’s blues, and for many, it became the essential sound of all blues.

– Embraced by white audiences –

By the early 1960s, however, King’s music lost its popularity with the rise of more slick R&B styles. But within a few years he would have a new audience: young, white and hip.

In 1968 he was invited to perform at San Francisco’s Fillmore West, the mecca of hippie folk and acid rock.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

“It was the first time I ever got a standing ovation in my life. It was so touching that I cried. Big grown man crying,” he later said.

The same year British guitar star Clapton told Rolling Stone magazine: “I still don’t think there is a better blues guitarist in the world than B.B. King.”

In 1969 the Rolling Stones invited King to open 18 US concerts, and his new career was launched.

“When you mention the Rolling Stones, I get on my knees,” King told the Los Angeles Times in 2005. “Because before them, we didn’t get the (recognition) that we do now.”

In 1970 he had his biggest-ever hit, the slow-moving, minor-key “The Thrill is Gone,” which took him for the first time onto the well-monied pop charts. It became one of his two signature songs.

The other was the show-stopping “How Blue Can You Get.” Knowing audiences would roar at the first words: “I’ve been downhearted baby/ever since the day we met.”

When he hit the key stanza, they would raucously sing along:

“I gave you a brand new Ford

and you said ‘I want a Cadillac’

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

I bought you a ten dollar dinner

You said ‘Thanks for the snack’

I let you live in my penthouse

You said it was just a shack

I gave you seven children

and now you wanna give ’em back.”

About The Author

Pages: 1 2 3

Comments
Advertisement

More on Capital News