It was December 1949. King and his band played a Juke Led in the small town of Twist, Ark., When two men hit a fight and hit a blazing junk bucket half-filled with kerosene, and swallowed the building in flames. After risking his life to retrieve his guitar from the collapsing structure, King taught that the men fought over a woman named Lucille. Then, King’s Guitar of Choice-Han eventually settled on curvy, semi-cue body models made of GibsonEither an ES-330 or ES-355-Be always known with that name.
King told the guitar’s original story in Song on the title track to his 1968 album “Lucille.”
In 1980 Gibson introduced his first BB King Signature guitar, a black ES-355 Thinline Dual Pickup Stereo Varone Model with a TP-6 Fine Tailpiece and “Lucille” spelled out in the script on the headstock. From a pragmatic point of view, its most remarkable function is its lack of the traditional F-hole opening in body cavity.
“(King) wanted to try to limit the feedback, which led to the F-hole deleted, which is why Lucilles are still popular until this day, even outside Blues,” says Mat Koehler, vice president of the product on
Gibson Brands.
During the years ago, Gibson has issued several different Lucille variants, including a lower prices Epiphone model, and a 100th anniversary edition is in the works.
