Fritzo
Lifer
- Jan 3, 2001
- 41,886
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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:
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
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:
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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