(Yes, I did promise a guide to passing Rockschool Grade 6-8 exams... but then this happened. Back to normal next month)
On
May 15th the music world lost one of its true icons. The
tuxedoed titan of the blues, Lucille's longtime and ever-faithful
lover, the man whose elegance and humour was mirrored in his
exquisite guitar playing – the one and only BB King is dead.
I'm
not a particularly sentimental person, and I can't claim to suffer
the grief that BB's family and friends must be suffering. But I must
admit to shedding a tear for a truly great musician, and a truly
inspirational man. So I think it's an appropriate tribute to examine
BB's contributions and the musical legacy he left us with.
Born
Riley B. King on September 16th,
1925 in Mississipi, BB was largely raised by his maternal grandmother
after his mother left his father for another man when he was just
four years old. His first exposure to music seems to have come
singing in the gospel choir at
Elkhorn
Baptist Church in Kilmichael, and at age 12 he acquired his first
guitar (accounts vary as to whether he purchased it himself or was
given it by blues guitarist Bukka White – White's mother and King's
grandmother who was raising him were cousins). There are also stories
of a very young Riley King nailing a string to the wall of his shack,
nailing the other end into the ground to create tension and playing
the string with a bottle as a slide.
In
1941, while working on a plantation aged 16, young Riley heard the
new “King Biscuit Show” on local radio – a show dedictated to
blues guitarists, and it was at that moment that his ambition
crystallised. He took his next step in 1943, leaving the town of
Kilmichael to work as a tractor driver, and got his first break
playing with the Famous St Johns Quartet on local radio station WGRM
in Greenwood, Mississipi. During this time, BB travelled and played
locally in many towns around the area, before taking his next big
step in 1947 – hitchiking to the capital of Southern music Memphis,
Tennessee to join his cousin Bukka White.
This
would lead in time to a 1948 performance on blues legend Sonny Boy
Williamson's radio show on KWEM, and eventually blossomed into King's
own show on WDIA
as a singer and disc jockey, gaining the nickname "Beale
Street Blues
Boy"
– soon enough “Blues Boy” became BB and the legend that we know
was born!
It
was during his time at WDIA that BB met T-bone Walker, one of the
very first electric blues players and fell in love with the electric
guitar, declaring “I
knew I'd have to have [an electric guitar] myself. 'Had' to have one,
short of stealing!"
BB
was able to build on his success in radio to become a professional
blues guitarist in 1949, working under contract to RPM records with
his band, the BB King Review. Many of these early recordings were
produced by Sam Phillips, who would go on to found Sun Records where
many of the early recordings of rock & roll legends Buddy Holly,
Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and many more.
RPM
backed several tours across the USA in the early 1950's, and it was
on one of these tours that the legend of Lucille was born.
Lucille
Lucille
has had many forms throughout her life – most recently in the shape
of the drop-dead gorgeous Gibson 335- derived signature model
introduced in 1982. But her origins are a good deal more humble.
During
his touring days, BB and his band would play many bars and juke
joints across the southern USA. During one show at Twist, Arkansas, a
fight broke out and started a fire which quickly spread throughout
the building. BB, his band and most of the crowd escaped, only for BB
to realise that his beloved $30 acoustic guitar was still inside! So
he did what any self-respecting guitar player would do – he dove
straight back in to the blazing building to retrieve it.
Later
he would find out that the two men who started the fight had been
brawling over a woman named Lucille – and both had died in the
fire. King named his guitar Lucille to remind himself never to do
anything as crazy again as fight over a woman or run into a blazing
building.
For
anything other than his guitar, that is.
In
1980 Gibson launched the BB King Lucille model based on the Gibson
ES-355 hollow body guitar, the main difference being the lack of
f-holes, and in 1999 was briefly joined by a Little Lucille model
based on their now discontinued Blueshawk model (this model has
largely been airbrushed from history by Gibson).
`
King
continued to record and perform during the 1950s. In 1956 his
schedule including a record-breaking 342 shows, and still found time
to form his own record label, Blues Boys Kingdom, based out of Beale
Street, Memphis.
With
the British Invasion of the 1960s, white blues artists such as Eric
Clapton and Paul Butterfield brought blues to a new audience,
crossing the racial divide, and many of these players were quick to
give credit to their influences. The “Three Kings” (B.B., Freddie
and Albert – none related) were given a massive boost by this new
exposure, and B.B was booked as the opening act for the Rolling
Stones tour in 1969, and in 1970 won a Grammy award for what would
become one of his signature songs, “The Thrill Is Gone”.
Throughout
the 1980s King maintained a vigorous touring and recording schedule,
playing 300 dates a year, and in 1988 his profile was raised yet
again when he collaborated with stadium giants U2 on the track “When
Loves Come To Town” from the Rattle & Hum album. U2
Singer Bono described this as a humbling experience - “I gave it
my all with that opening howl, but when BB took over I just felt like
a little girl..”, and in 2000 he and Eric Clapton recorded
“Riding with the King” which would garner another Grammy as “Best
Traditional Blues Album”
Despite
age and health problems, B.B kept up his schedule into the new
century, rounding off his long career of international touring with a
performance at Glastonbury Festival in 2011 and an emotional concert
filmed at the Albert Hall featuring Ronnie Wood and Slash, among
others. I caught this on Sky Arts in 2013 and the reverence,
affection and respect for the now 86 year old B.B was palpable, and I
strongly recommend any fan of guitar playing to check it out.
B.B
continued to perform regularly, mostly in the domestic USA, until
October 2014 at the House Of Blues in Chicago when he was forced to
pull the gig due to health issues. Sadly, this would be his last
performance as his diabetes forced his health into terminal decline.
He would go into hospice care in May 2015, and on May 15th,
a series of small strokes caused by his diabetes took his life while
he slept – and the world lost an icon. A man who took the blues
from smoky, dirty deep South juke joints to playing in front of
presidents and royalty, a true giant of a musician. The world is less
for his passing.
BB's
Style
BB
King was the undisputed master of the right note in the right
place. The late great Stevie Ray Vaughan once commented on a jam
session - “..and he got up and played one note, and I died”. He
was particularly noted for his instantly recognisable “butterfly”
vibrato, achieved by pivoting his fingertip on the string while
resting the knuckle joint against the neck of the guitar (for more
discussion of vibrato techniques, see Zero Point Guitar).
He
was also a master of elegantly blending minor and major pentatonics
to great effect in “jump” blues tracks like “How Blue Can You
Get?” - this effect is in large part due to his use of the “BB
Box” pentatonic fingering. Those of you familiar with Progressive
Guitar Training Vol. 1 will recognise this as the Trapezoid
fingering – for example, in the key of A minor, this fingering
places the root (A) under the first finger at the 10th
fret B string, the b3 ( C ) under the third or little finger at the
13th fret. The 4th ( D ) and 5th (E) are easily accessible
at the 10th and 12th frets on the top E string,
and the b7 (G) sits within easy reach at the 12th fret G.
A high root note (in this key, the A on the 17th fret top
E string) is another B.B hallmark.
This
fingering allows an easy switch to major pentatonic, as the 2nd
(B) is easily accessed at the 12th fret under the third
finger, allowing for a bend up to the major 3rd (C#), and
the 5th can be bent up a tone to reach the 6th
(F#). B. B was adept at blending the “colours” of these intervals
to effortlessly achieve sophisticated, jazzy sounds while keeping his
phrasing natural and unforced.
B.B
also possessed a stunning command of dynamics – listening to his
recordings, you hear his band go from a whisper to a roar and back,
following the nuances of his voice, and this is mirrored in the
guitar playing. Check out the intro to “The Thrill Is Gone” - the
opening B note leaps out of the mix at you, while the pentatonic
phrase that follows is played with the utmost delicacy. The
intro to “Outside Help” is a masterclass in dynamics, the band
swelling behind Lucille as the phrases build in intensity before
falling back to almost nothing as the vocals enter.
Interestingly,
minimal though it is, B.B's phrasing can be hard to pin down and
duplicate. Certainly, “The Thrill Is Gone” many phrases are on
the opposite side of the beat to what you would expect – most
player will drop in a couple of pick-up notes on the off beat,
leading in to the “big” note on the downbeat. B.B doesn't bother
with that, coming straight in on the downbeat and playing less than
you think... but somehow manages to make it work without ever
sounding amateurish.
This
partly stems from his background as a vocalist – indeed, to the
non-guitar fraternity, B.B was a singer who played guitar. By his own
admission, he never got a grip on playing chords, so would use single
note lines as a counterpoint to his vocals. This meant he was more
influenced by the phrasing used by singers more than by other guitar
players (aside from anything else, in the 1940s and early 1950s,
there was far less guitar music around to learn from –
B.B and his contemporaries set
the template that the subsequent generations would follow and build
on). Indeed, B.B described his own style as being heavily
vocal-influenced:
“When
I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start
to sing by playing Lucille.”
B.B's
Legacy
When
the world lost BB King, we lost one of the music world's few
remaining connections to the birth of electric blues. And it's safe
to say, without the blues there would have been no rock & roll,
no Rolling Stones, Hendrix or Cream... rock and pop music would sound
very different today.
So much of the music we take for
granted now has its roots in the sharecropper's huts where musicians
like B.B, Freddie and Albert King, Buddy Guy, T-Bone Walker and more
grew up. The electric guitar is a comparatively young instrument, but
it's effect on music has been out of all proportion to it's lifespan
– and the musician's of B.B's generation are the last ones who were
in at the beginning and defined its sounds and expressive qualities.
As guitar players, we should realise that these musicians are our
roots, and created so much of what we have now. Moments like this are
times to reflect on what these men gave us, go back and revisit their
old recordings from when music was new and changing and no-one knew
what this incredible brand-new instrument could or couldn't do, and
to learn from them. Sit down with your iPod and modelling amp and
pick out a few of the King's greatest licks from his earliest recordings when it was all new. There is no better way
to honour him.
