When BB King died in May 2015 at the age of 89, his Amount obituary Praised him as “The Blues’ King”, which helped define his genre electrified post -war sound and became the most famous international ambassador to music. “It is far from his first performance on these pages on June 2, 1954, a review of his debut in New York at Harlem’s Apollo Theater the previous week describing him as a” Rhythm & Blues Dish “who” loses a guitar to accompany his modest vocalization. ”
Today, when the world marks what would have been King’s 100th birthday on September 16, it seems ridiculous that someone would call his powerful song “modest” or his complaining guitar Twangy. But while he had already noted three No. 1 hits on Billboard R&B chart at that time 1954 (including the classic “3 -time blues”), he was not something similar to a household name. In fact, it would be more than 15 years before he would break through with “mainstream” (ie white) audience with the hit single “The thrill is gone”, which topped on No. 15 on the Billboard lists in 1970 and won him his first Grammy.
King continued with 14 Grammys, as well as a lifetime performance, and played for many heads of state, including three US presidents and Queen Elizabeth II, as well as Pope John Paul II. His 1965 album “Live at the Regal”, a modest hit when he was first released, is now generally considered a seminal Blues Classic, and he released his most successful album, 2000s “Riding with the king”, a double-platinum collaboration with Eric Clapton, at the advanced age 74.
“He is a man who many people loved, he is a man who loved many people, and he is a man who loved to unite his audience and play his fucking guitar,” says veteran music producer Vasal BenfordChairman of BB King Estate. “I’ve never heard a bad word about him from anyone.”
Love continues more than a decade after his passing. The city of Memphis, Tennessee – where the man gave birth to Riley B. King rose prominently as a deejay and artist at the groundbreaking black radio station WDIA and adopted BB Moniker (an abbreviated abbreviation of “Beale Street Blues Boy”) – marked its centennial with a “100 day Blues”. And in recent years, King’s Estate has launched branded products ranging from clothing and guitar selection to a signature line of bourbon and whiskey.
Benford and the farm are currently developing a King Biopic through their Benford & Canton studios, founded with the producer Marc Canton (“300”, Starz’s “Power”), which they plan to put in production next year. It will be accompanied by a soundtrack album with contemporary artists who put a modern spin on King Classics.
Meanwhile, blues guitarist and singer Joe Bonhapassa has put together a more traditional musical tribute, entitled “BB King’s Blues Summit 100”, a 32-track album with songs famous by King with an all-star range including Clapton, Slash, Buddy Guy, Chaka Khan, Michael McDonald, Susan, Susan Tedschi & Dedschi & Shepher. The first five tracks were released digitally on his birthday, and another five tracks will be released each month before the physical and full digital edition of the album on January 9.
“I owe king a gratitude for what he did to me,” says Bonamassa, who first shared a scene with King in 1989 when he was 12 years old. “This pays it forward and tries to do what he told me to do, which is to keep the music going, keep blues alive and keep on the right path.”
King did not arrive at the stage completely shaped. Early in his career, he was known as a singer, not a guitar player, and he really remained uncertain about his game ability and often regretted his “stupid fingers.” But his signature gray bends and stinging, trilling vibrato – was originally developed because he could not play image like other blues artists – affected generations by guitarists.
“His tone was almost the same tone on the guitar as in his song,” Bonamassa says. “It was just a natural extension of his voice.”
U2 singer Bono Must experience the power of that voice from the first place when the band collaborated with King on the single “When Love Comes to Town” was released in 1989.
“I gave it my absolute everything I had in that scream at the beginning of the song, and then BB opened my mouth, and I felt like a girl,” reminded Bono in the 2014 documentary “The Life of Riley.” “We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like BB, the less convincing we were.”
In the documentary “U2: Rattle and Hum”, King tells Bono, “I’m not good with chords.” Of course, King was able to play chords – he had supported himself as a solo act that busd on the sidewalks in his hometown of Indianola, Miss – but he preferred to focus on what he did best and give every task his full attention, only played main lines on his guitar and never sings and played at the same time.
“BB was a specialist and had a pure and unthinkable guitar style,” U2 guitarist The edge tells Amount. “You would know within a note or two that it played BB, and it is in a music that is so studied and plagiarized. Being one of the defining voices in a whole genre of music is no meaningful performance. I am very happy that he did not waste time to be branched out in other styles. As Keith Richards say,” All candies specialist specializes specialist specializes specialist specializes. “
During the first three decades in Biz, King played 250-300 concerts per year, including an astonishing 342 show in 1956. His rate slowed down at 175 per year as he approached the 1980s, but for the past five years of his life he was still an average of 75 concerts annually. When he lay on his deathbed in his home in Las Vegas in 2015, and suffered from various diseases including type 2 diabetes and dementia, King still insisted that he needed to come back on the road, partly because he felt an obligation to support his band and crew. He was also driven by a desire to live up to expectations from his undemonstrative father, Albert King, an agricultural worker who, when his son complained about his relentless tournament early in his career, said: “How can a man work too much?”
Even as a boy King was always on his way. He was born on September 16, 1925 on a cotton plantation near the Itta Bena, Miss. After his parents were divided when he was four, he bounced between home for different relatives with his mother, Ella. When she died in 1935 at the age of 31, probably from diabetic complications, he went with his grandmother, Elenora, who died five years later. It was around this time that 14-year-old King formed his first musical group, Elkhorn Jubilee singers, with two classmates and a cousin. He later sang and played the guitar-a used Stella Acoustic bought with money earned the picking of cotton-with famous St. John Gospel singer, an Indianola-based quintet that performed at churches and radio stations. After a stint in the army during the Second World War, King abandoned his job on a cotton plantation after he crashed a tractor and moved to Memphis to seek his fame and fortune as a musician. He was helped by Blues Singer and guitarist Bukka White, a cousin 19 years his senior who helped him get a job at a factory that made underground gasoline storage thoughts and introduced him to the local music scene.
King’s musical influence was much broader than the most prominent blues artists who came out of Chicago or, like him, the Mississippi Delta region. In addition to Bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker included his long list of inspiration jazz guitarist Lonnie Johnson and Charlie Christian, the big band Stylings by Duke Ellington, Jump Blues King Louis Jordan, balladers as Nat King Cole and The Ink Spots, and to the Cows, and for Mer to, and Med to
In the Early-to-Mid 1960s, King and His Large, Suit-Clad, Horn-Laden Band Were Still Toiling in Relative Obscurity Playing to Audiecnes That Were Almost Exclusely Black On The “Chitlin Circuit,” While More Down-Home, Straight, Waters, Howlin ‘Wolf and John Lee Hooker Were Getting Mainstream Exposure – and Career Revival – Thanks to Covers by Scruffy British Invasion Acts Like The Rolling Stones, Garden Birds and Animals. This corresponded to a demographic change for Blues, which fell in favor of young black audiences, which turned to new funk and soul sounds, just as young white people embraced it.
Anything that changed in early 1969, when an inexperienced young producer is named Bill Szymczyk King and his record label ABC paramount convinced that he was the man who produced his next album, “Live & Well.” When it was released in June of the same year, it became King’s first album as Crack Billboard’s top 100. Their next collaboration, “TROP”, released just six months later, King’s signature created Hit “The Thrill Is Gone.” With that he was launched in pop culture pantheon.
For Szymczyk was one of the things that stands out most about King his generosity.
“I was a staff producer at ABC at that time, so I didn’t get any royalties. Out of the goodness of his heart he made me half a writer on an instrument called” Friends “, reminiscent of Szymczyk, who went on to produce a series of classic albums by Eagles, including” Hotel California. “
The gesture was even more remarkable given that the managers of King’s previous label, Brothers Jules and Saul Bihari from modern records, often accompanied as co -author of King’s songs without permission. But that bit of underhanded business was nothing compared to the indignities he regularly endured the intersection Jim Crow South, including an incident where two band members were attacked with a chain and another became stabbed. When truck stops would refuse to serve food for their tournament party-a regular event-would use the possibilities of losing the sale of gas to fill the 150-plus-gallon tank in its bus as a financial incentive to change.
King’s quiet way of dealing with racist slides torn at Tony Coleman, a black drummer 30 years his junior who joined his band in 1978. Coleman was also not afraid to complain about things like the band had to ride on an old -fashioned bus without lighting places or bunks.
“I had a lot of confidence in myself, because I knew I could play, but there is a thin line between trust and arrogance,” observes Coleman, who likes to say that King shot him five times and hired him sex. “He taught me how to have patience, how you are not too powerful with my desires and how you think a little instead of reacting.”
Coleman remembers a rare case when his boss lost his cool. The band checked in at one of Memphi’s finer hotel, when King – who had been friends with killed Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King and Medar Evers – heard someone play and sing the Confederate Hymn “Dixie.”
“He told the tour manager,” we will not stay here. Put back the luggage on the bus, “reminds Coleman, which admits he was looking forward to the hotel’s amenities and amenities.” I was like, “wait, wait … not now!”
