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RIP B.B. King

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I'm going to get long winded and teary here, so forgive me.

B.B. King was...is still...one of the biggest musical influences in my life, and the world is a sadder place with his passing. He brought the electric blues out of seedy nightclubs and into peoples homes. King found a way to make you feel happy about listening to music about sorrow and misery. He could sing, and he could make his fingers sing along with him. He talked with such a polite and welcoming rasp that you could sit and listen to his stories all day long. Souls like this just don't come along very often.

When I was 14, my guitar instructor said "We're going to learn the pentatonic scale today." I remember thinking "Well, that sounds boring..." He laid out a chart that looked something like this:

b-minorpentatonicpositions.gif


I got an overwhelmed feeling looking at all the dots, but he assured me "We're just going to work with the first one. Go home and memorize it so you can play it up and down next week." I went home and did as instructed. The tones sounded like the standard boring "DO RE MI..." junk they always make you do when learning and instrument, and it got boring very quickly. In fact, I practiced so much I started to get angry, and at my next lesson I demanded to know "WHAT'S THE POINT OF ALL THIS???"

My instructor proceeded to take out a tape of B.B. King: Live at the Regal. Being 14, I couldn't have cared less about an old black guy from 1915 singing about how his baby left him. He assured me "Just listen, and play the scale along with this song at the 7th fret on your guitar." He played "How Blue Can You Get," and something magical happened. ALL OF THE NOTES I WAS PLAYING FIT INTO THE SONG. It was at that point that I "got" music. My eyes were opened to a higher reality...I could see the notes King was playing in my head and I could understand the sentences he was speaking.

I currently have over 200 B.B. King recordings in my collection, and I listen to them every week. The vibrato in his guitar makes his playing instantly recognizable, and he's still teaching me something new every time I listen. (BTW- B.B. stands for "Blues Boy"...a nickname he got as a disk jockey in the 1950's).

If you have time, please take a listen to Live at the Regal. It's one of the best blues recordings ever made and maybe it will influence you like it did me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMTpa2wRFIQ
 
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Awesome story Fritzo - I like reading things like this with all the depressing events going on (what seems like daily). And thanks for the link, I'm listening at work as we speak.
 
Fritzo said:
I'm going to get long winded and teary here, so forgive me.

B.B. King was...is still...one of the biggest musical influences in my life, and the world is a sadder place with his passing. He brought the electric blues out of seedy nightclubs and into peoples homes. King found a way to make you feel happy about listening to music about sorrow and misery. He could sing, and he could make his fingers sing along with him. He talked with such a polite and welcoming rasp that you could sit and listen to his stories all day long. Souls like this just don't come along very often.

When I was 14, my guitar instructor said "We're going to learn the pentatonic scale today." I remember thinking "Well, that sounds boring..." He laid out a chart that looked something like this:

b-minorpentatonicpositions.gif


I got an overwhelmed feeling looking at all the dots, but he assured me "We're just going to work with the first one. Go home and memorize it so you can play it up and down next week." I went home and did as instructed. The tones sounded like the standard boring "DO RE MI..." junk they always make you do when learning and instrument, and it got boring very quickly. In fact, I practiced so much I started to get angry, and at my next lesson I demanded to know "WHAT'S THE POINT OF ALL THIS???"

My instructor proceeded to take out a tape of B.B. King: Live at the Regal. Being 14, I couldn't have cared less about an old black guy from 1915 singing about how his baby left him. He assured me "Just listen, and play the scale along with this song at the 7th fret on your guitar." He played "How Blue Can You Get," and something magical happened. ALL OF THE NOTES I WAS PLAYING FIT INTO THE SONG. It was at that point that I "got" music. My eyes were opened to a higher reality...I could see the notes King was playing in my head and I could understand the sentences he was speaking.

I currently have over 200 B.B. King recordings in my collection, and I listen to them every week. The vibrato in his guitar makes his playing instantly recognizable, and he's still teaching me something new every time I listen. (BTW- B.B. stands for "Blues Boy"...a nickname he got as a disk jockey in the 1950's).

If you have time, please take a listen to Live at the Regal. It's one of the best blues recordings ever made and maybe it will influence you like it did me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMTpa2wRFIQ
Click to expand...
I love me some pentatonic
 
OK now I am kicking myself for skipping the concert at his club on Beale St in Memphis a few years ago. Live at Cook County jail is the best, better than the The Regal
 
Sad day. I used to be a telephone operator and I completed collect calls for him a number of times. He had family in Ohio. Other than, Thank you, Mr. King, it's an honor, I stuck to business and didn't ask him questions. He was always gracious and friendly. Always struck me as a genuinely good person.
RIP.
 
Got to see him on consecutive Saturday nights at the old Spectrum in Philly, on the underbill for a different lineup of then super hot rock acts each night. So evocative! The man could make his guitar sing. He also impressed on my callow and lily white suburban ass that true showmanship didn't necessarily consist of louder and faster.

He showed us all was "soul" really was.
 
glad to see all the love instead of the usual fuckery around here these days <3

I saw King 4 times and met him once after a show. He was just pure class from top to bottom, so humble and genuinely interested in talking with fans. I remember his hand felt like putting mine inside a catcher's mitt, as the expression goes heh. He went out doing what he loved and lived a long and successful live. We should all be so lucky.
 
Enjoying a nice glass of bourbon, cleaning my drum kit and listening to BB. I hope he's rocking out up there with all the other greats. I wonder where Lucille will end up? Since you know... She couldn't really go with him on this trip.
 
Platypus said:
glad to see all the love instead of the usual fuckery around here these days <3

I saw King 4 times and met him once after a show. He was just pure class from top to bottom, so humble and genuinely interested in talking with fans. I remember his hand felt like putting mine inside a catcher's mitt, as the expression goes heh. He went out doing what he loved and lived a long and successful live. We should all be so lucky.
Click to expand...

😎

Anyone that says something bad about BB....

yPINpGv.png
 
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twinrider1 said:
Sad day. I used to be a telephone operator and I completed collect calls for him a number of times. He had family in Ohio. Other than, Thank you, Mr. King, it's an honor, I stuck to business and didn't ask him questions. He was always gracious and friendly. Always struck me as a genuinely good person.
RIP.
Click to expand...

That's pretty cool 🙂 He called collect though? 😵
 
MongGrel said:
RIP.

I heard the one about Ben King last week and thought they had said BB at first, odd they both went so close together.
Click to expand...

IIRC, they had announced BB was going into hospice that same day. I remember thinking, "wow, that's not good". The music world lost a great man who countless blues and rock musicians own a huge debt.

SiriusXM is running a tribute to him on Bluesville, channel 70.
 
I don't think I've ever heard a single song of his, barely even recognize the name.
Wonder why that is? I'm not some young new age hipster.

I guess there's just to much music for one person to listen to...






By coming into a condolence thread, about probably the biggest blues artist in the world, who just passed and basically say who?

That's threadcrapping. Stay out of the thread.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director
 
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CraKaJaX said:
Same here. Saw it on my phone this morning before I turned the news on. Really sad, another legend gone.

I saw Clapton a few weeks ago for his '70th birthday jam' at MSG. He did a great version of Driftin and dedicated it to Ben E King who had recently passed. Clapton is now over in London at the RAH to continue that tour with a bunch of shows there. I believe the first show is tonight. It's going to be cool to see what Eric does to honor BB. He was like a father to him.
Click to expand...
http://www.whereseric.com/eric-clap...is-200th-royal-albert-hall-appearance-bb-king
 
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