Post by blackjack on May 15, 2015 15:53:06 GMT -6
I don't have any details on what Mr. King died of but apparently he passed away late last night or early this morning. He was in my opinion the world's greatest blues guitar player and a tremendous blues singer as well. I was fortunate enough to have been to see two of his concerts on two different tours when he passed by my part of the country. I saw him first in the mid to late 80's if remember correctly and then I saw him a second time around 1998 or 1999. He put on an incredible concert each time from the very first note he played until the last. If you closed your eyes and there were several blues guitarists jamming on stage, you could immediately identify B.B.King with just hearing one or two notes. His tone was that distinctive. He had a very unique technique for creating vibrato on a note. Sometimes he would be playing sort of low on the neck, maybe in the fifth position and then slide up to the 12 or 15th position and play a single note with his trademark vibrato. He called that "stinging" a note. The note wasn't bent, it was just picked hard and he applied a lot of vibrato to it.
There aren't many notes in the traditional blues scale but B.B. had a knack for finding extra notes once in a while that fit in, such as maybe playing a major 3rd in a song that was in a minor key. He also liked to use the 2nd of the scale from time to time,such as in his biggest hit of his career - "The Thrill Is Gone." Indeed, for blues lovers all over the world, an important part of "the thrill" is gone for good but we have our memories and our records and CDs of B.B. to remember him by. He toured well into old age because he loved entertaining the people he loved making people happy. He would talk with the audience between songs and always had some interesting stories and some funny jokes to tell. He was one of a kind. He had so much soul that his music just connected with people from all walks of life. I've never seen a musician who attracted so many different generations of people to one of his concerts and made them all have such a fun time as B.B. King did.
There aren't many notes in the traditional blues scale but B.B. had a knack for finding extra notes once in a while that fit in, such as maybe playing a major 3rd in a song that was in a minor key. He also liked to use the 2nd of the scale from time to time,such as in his biggest hit of his career - "The Thrill Is Gone." Indeed, for blues lovers all over the world, an important part of "the thrill" is gone for good but we have our memories and our records and CDs of B.B. to remember him by. He toured well into old age because he loved entertaining the people he loved making people happy. He would talk with the audience between songs and always had some interesting stories and some funny jokes to tell. He was one of a kind. He had so much soul that his music just connected with people from all walks of life. I've never seen a musician who attracted so many different generations of people to one of his concerts and made them all have such a fun time as B.B. King did.