Throughout my adult life, there have been four top influences on the way I appreciate and approach the guitar, and they have been Duane Allman (combining rock, blues, jazz and fire in a southern inter-racial band), Django Reinhardt (incredible talent and solos and SWING!), Tony Rice (acoustic brilliance!) and B.B. King. With King, it was all things The Blues, of course, but it was also the fact that he could get more out of 3 notes than others did with 300. Simplify and feel it, don’t overplay it or play too many notes, but instead conversate and communicate through your instrument.
B.B. King has seemingly been around forever. One of my favorite albums by King is 1970’s Live at Cook County Jail, where his guitar playing was spot on and he also played many of his early hits from the 1950s and early 60s which made him famous such as “Sweet Sixteen,” “Every Day I Have The Blues,” “3 O’clock Blues” and “Please Accept My Love.” And, of course, the studio version of “Thrill is Gone” came out when I was 11 years old and it was awesome. The song, with its strings and overall coolness, and was as much Soul music as it was the Blues and that helped BB relate to a new generation.
Right around 1979, I went to see a magnificent show at the historic and beautiful Music Hall in Cincinnati. The bill featured the R-rated soulster Millie Jackson, the legendary Bobby Blue Bland and The King – B.B. King. What was incredibly cool about the show was it was uptown, as in everybody who came to the concert dressed to the nines, both the ladies and the men. When Bobby Blue Bland did his signature scrawl, women screamed and swooned and threw their scarves at him from the balcony. Then B.B. came out and killed and at the end, B.B. and Bobby joined forces and killed it. Later in the 1980s, I went to see B.B. play in a smaller club in Cincinnati called Bogart’s. This was back when B.B. still played two shows on the same night, and my friend Terry Ziegler and I went to the late show. What was cool about his late show was he took off his suit coat, got rid of his tie and concentrated on his guitar playing. He was in the mood to play his guitar Lucille much more than sing and it was revelatory. It was a fabulous chance to see B.B. in a guitar mood and throwing down. God bless B.B. King!
After the great B.B. King died last night, I searched my archive of over 500 interviews to find some quotes. In 2010/11, I interviewed Warren Haynes in 2010 right after he played the Clapton Crossroads Festival where he jammed with B.B. King. Here are Warren's thoughts on playing with one of his heroes - "I got to play with B.B. King for the first time, which was high on my list, maybe number one on my list of things to do. He’s one of those pe...ople where his voice and his guitar playing are the same thing. They’re coming from the same heart, the same kind of vibrato and the same sort of note selection and punctuation, and even the same kind of sound. I think that some people don’t realize to what extent B.B. influenced everybody because all of our favorite rock and roll was either influenced by B.B., or the people they were influenced by were influenced by B.B.. So, it’s a big family tree.”
http://www.sfchronicle.com/music/article/Music-A-night-at-the-Fillmore-changed-B-B-6266457.php
Music: A night at the Fillmore changed B.B. King’s career forever
By Joel Selvin
May 15, 2015
One night in San Francisco changed everything in B.B. King’s life — in amazing and unpredictable ways.
B.B. King, the greatest bluesman of his generation who died Thursday at 89 in Las Vegas, had played the Fillmore Auditorium many times before that night in February 1967. It had been operated by Charles Sullivan, a ghetto entrepreneur who ran jukeboxes and cigarette machines up and down the coast, as well as producing rhythm and blues concerts at the 1100-seat upstairs dance hall in the middle of a black neighborhood that had thrived prior to urban redevelopment, a well-known stop on the so-called chitlin’ circuit.
But this night, as King walked up the back stairs and entered the familiar hall, he was greeted by an unfamiliar sight - a roomful of young white hippies. B.B. King said he’d never before played for a white audience in his lengthy career. He was shocked and dismayed. The promoter of the concert, Bill Graham, who leased the hall from Sullivan the year before, greeted King backstage and asked if he needed anything.
“I need a drink of scotch,” the unnerved bluesman said.
At age 42, his career was in decline. He had been on the road ceaselessly since before his “3 O’Clock Blues” was a No. 1 R&B hit for five weeks in 1952, after being released the year before - although the onetime Mississippi farmhand long maintained a residence in Las Vegas, he always said his home was “anyplace I stay three days” - but the natural constituency for his music was older black audiences. Soul power was the now sound and blues was a reminder of bad old days, conks and Jim Crow. His popularity had steadily eroded in the black community.
King’s music was a delicate but brawny synthesis of the old-fashioned country blues he heard as youth in Mississippi, where he spent plenty of time behind a mule and plow, from masters of the delta blues such as his cousin Bukka White. He was smitten by the almost jazzy electric guitar blues of T-Bone Walker, the first person B.B. King heard play a single-line solo on electric guitar, and the French gypsy jazz great Django Reinhardt. A lifelong autodidact who traveled with self-help books and piles of tape cassettes of music, King fashioned a bright, piercing big-band blues sound that mirrored the hectic urban life of blacks in the city.
Mike Bloomfield, the superstar guitarist of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and a key King disciple, encouraged Graham to book the bluesman. That February night at the Fillmore, the opening act was the Steve Miller Blues Band, making its first appearance at the Fillmore five months after forming. When Miller took the stage, he was vaguely annoyed to discover that his road crew had placed King’s guitar on a stand prominently on stage - the trademark cherry red Gibson ES-335 King called Lucille. “I thought that was out of line,” said Miller, “a piece of blues-upmanship.”
When Miller broke a string during his performance, he went over and picked up King’s guitar to play. He took one swipe at the guitar and all the strings broke loose from the bridge. “They were the lightest gauge strings in the world,” Miller said.
Backstage King paid no mind to the mishap. “B.B. was so sweet, so kind,” said Miller.
That night a door opened for B.B. King and he entered a new world. He would spend the next 47 years touring the world as blues’ greatest ambassador, in front of audiences far removed from his humble beginnings, a tireless performer with the grace, dignity and depth of a Duke Ellington.
“He was a gentleman to anyone he met,” said Miller, who jammed onstage with King throughout his career. “He was always generous to other musicians. I never saw him get mad or be too busy to give a tip to some kid who wanted to play guitar.”
Over the years, at performances before an Oakland Stadium full of soul fans or the tiny Oakland niterie called the Showcase, at the Fillmores and Winterland alongside rock bands such as The Byrds, Mothers of Invention or Allman Brothers, or later years at the Great American Music Hall or even his last show at the Masonic Auditorium, where he was taken on and off stage in a wheelchair, he was never less than impeccable, spinning crystalline, silvery melodies on his guitar and bellowing the blues as only he could.
In time, the towering contributions to American music made by B.B. King will be better understood and widely acknowledged. He brought blues out of the cotton patches into the big city. His guitar licks created the standard vocabulary of the instrument, endlessly recycled by young guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix and countless others — virtually anyone who picks up a guitar to play some blues. Through it all, he maintained his good will and gentle wisdom, a Buddha of the blues.
His life represents the triumph of his generation of black Americans, an emergence from the shadows of history into the light of acclaim and recognition. He never forgot where he came from and he never forgot the turning point that night at the Fillmore.
Joel Selvin is the former longtime pop music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle and a Bay Area author.
Great stuff, Derek!
At one of the first BB King shows that I attended, I was almost surprised at the number of African Americans in the audience. Yes. I know how strange this sentence sounds.
It was at a show at Birmingham's, Alabama Theater. I had attended a lot of blues shows by this point in my life. Blues, for the most part seemed to have been pretty much abandoned by the black audience. Most show audiences at blues shows seemed to be made up largely of white males. Blues, it would seem is good beer drinking music. It goes well with barbecue. It wasn't uncommon to see a lot of the "Skynyrd contingency" at blues shows - especially in the south.
BB King's shows (especially the one that I am recounting) were literally culturally bridging events.
The makeup of this audience was at least half-black- half-white. There might have even been a slightly larger number of black faces. The mix of male to female was also a split. Age-wise, there was a huge gamut. Clean faced teenagers to wrinkled faces supported by walking canes.
I sat in the middle area of the floor, about halfway back from the stage.
On my row (seated next to me) was a younger (30-ish) black man who had traveled from Philadelphia, Mississippi. We chatted about BB King, about the blues and about life in the deep south. From his attire and accent, I would not be surprised if this man wasn't a field hand or a farmer. But we didn't talk shop on this night. If I remember correctly, this guy's name was Walter.
Also on my row were three African American women - all of whom appeared to be in their late 70s. They were dressed (as you say) to the nines! Fine dresses and hats and smelling like those ladies who would give me forced hugs and kisses at the local Baptist church I attended as a child before my daddy said I didn't have to go to anymore if I didn't want to.
There were also the teenage guitar players and guitar player wannabees - there to watch closely and hopefully walk away with a new lick or two and to later make comparisons of BB to their many other guitar heroes. Yeah, I've been there myself.
BB King was still exceptional in those days. No need to make excuses for this performance - sit back or stand up - watch and enjoy. Remember this all your life.
The setlist was standard. All the favorites - all the hits. The ladies danced in their finery and the men hooped an howled. The call and response was akin to the sounds that emanated from the black baptist church across the tracks from where I grew up. The one near where the Sunday bootlegger lived who would not sell my daddy the first six pack until after the service had ended.
The show was fantastic! Near the end, pretty much everybody on my row (and other rows) got up and rushed forward for the stage. It was a wave of humanity unstoppable my even the most vigilant staff of ushers and bouncers.
As he walked off the stage for the final time, BB reached into his pockets and retreived guitar picks, lapel pins and other schwag which he threw into the audience as if he were riding on a Mardi Gras float. I was fortunate enough to come up with a fairly large handful of said memorabilia.
I looked over and noticed that Walter had come up empty handed. Since I already had some BB schwag from a previous show, I gave my handful to Walter and bade that he have a safe drive back to Philadelphia - a town not too far from where BB picked cotton as a young boy.
i remember 1st time i saw BB. i think it was 1990 at the Indiana Black Expo. it was an outdoor show and Bobby Blue Bland also played that evening. LOL my buddy and i seemed like 2 of only a handful of white people at the show. if i remember right BB's set got cut short because of rain. we were invited under some folks tent to stay dry and talked about music for a hour it seems. we even got invited back to their house for a late night cookout. i'll never forget that show and how it felt to be a minority but still feel so welcomed.
First saw BB play a couple of times in the early 70's..he was a real gentleman & class act standing up there onstage. He always connected with the audience.
He truly was the Godfather of Blues & a great Ambassador of the genre !
Later saw him play with the 3 Kings...again he was a very giving musician & 'old soul' onstage. He transcended just being a blues musician & was something much more. I'd like to always remember him that way & his legacy will live on for sure !!
the 1st time I heard BB was on the ABC Friday night rock concert show in the early 70s (ABC used to have concerts on 11:30 PM on Friday nights. The very 1st one was the ABB at Hofstra iirc).
I saw this black guy come out in a tux with a big ban and was a little confused.
Then I heard him play. wow.
I saw him at My Father's Place on Long Island in the late 70s. An amazing stage presence.
Lots of BB today on shnflac.net, including the FM simulcast of the TV show I mentioned above
http://shnflac.net/details.php?id=9b3c2cd2239fb66e8c01c8c93aa52e8f6522564d#comments
