BB King was like royalty when it came to the blues. By the 70’s and 80’s he was a major attraction at concert venues and all the major British blues guitarists pay tribute to him. Like all of the black blues artists that came to England he was a historian. The blues is a historical art form as it tells the story of the beauty and love and life as well as the pain, horrors and brutality of it. The blues performers from the US, both male and female, like Billie Holiday and Big Mama Thornton gave working class or common folk if you like, a purer history lesson about life in America than the professors and other so-called experts. Anyone who's listened to Big Bill Broonzy’s Black, Brown and White couldn’t help but learn a powerful history lesson about the US South.
BB King once said he’d, “put up
with more humiliation than I care to remember.” And that, “Touring
a segregated America - forever being stopped and harassed by white cops hurt
you most 'cos you don't realize the damage. You hold it in. You feel empty,
like someone reached in and pulled out your guts. You feel hurt and dirty, less
than a person.”
Of course, racism or whipped up hatred of people because of
their color is not specific to the US but it must have been some surprise to
the US blues folks like BB King that they could stay in the same venue they
might be playing in.
This is not much of a tribute to BB King, he deserves much
more but I felt the need to say something and for this blog to not let his
death pass unnoticed. I have many
friends who could write a tribute to the man that would be more deserving but,
as is always the case, getting the idea to become real takes time.
Despite all of the poison and violence that people like BB
King faced growing up in the Jim Crow South, King said: “When people treat you mean, you dislike them for that, but
not because of their person, who they are. I was born and raised in a
segregated society, but when I left there, I had nobody I disliked other than
the people that'd mistreated me, and that only lasted for as long as they were
mistreating me.”
BB King, 9-16-1925----5-14-2015
Friday 15 May 2015 02.58 EDT Last modified on Friday 15
May 2015 08.06 EDT
Very few 20th-century musicians were able to combine the roles of game-changing, creative, innovative virtuoso and beloved popular entertainer. Within this tiny elite group, BB King ranks second only to the late Louis Armstrong, who not only charmed the world with his jovial, winning personality but virtually invented the concept of the jazz soloist, and on whose broad shoulders all successors stood. Who else is there? Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra and, of course, the Beatles in general and Paul McCartney in particular.
Very few 20th-century musicians were able to combine the roles of game-changing, creative, innovative virtuoso and beloved popular entertainer. Within this tiny elite group, BB King ranks second only to the late Louis Armstrong, who not only charmed the world with his jovial, winning personality but virtually invented the concept of the jazz soloist, and on whose broad shoulders all successors stood. Who else is there? Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra and, of course, the Beatles in general and Paul McCartney in particular.
Genius and popularity alone are not enough: despite their
brilliance, Bob Dylan and Miles Davis were too taciturn, too mysterious and too
sharp-clawed for an audience to feel entirely comfortable and relaxed in their
presence. BB King’s impact on the way blues guitar – and, by extension, rock
guitar – is played to this very day is immeasurable. It is impossible to
imagine how Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Albert King,
Freddie King (both of whom dropped their birth surnames in favour of BB’s),
Stevie Ray Vaughan, Gary Moore or Joe Bonamassa, to name but a few, might have
played had BB King never
existed.
Yet his instrumental virtuosity and the seamless interaction between the liquid, vocal tone he conjured from the numerous Gibson semi-acoustic guitars that have borne the nickname “Lucille” over the past six-and-a-half decades and his warm, chesty singing (“First I sing and then Lucille sings”) was only one part of the reason for his pre-eminence not only in his chosen field of the blues but in the broader expanse of the past musical century’s popular mainstream. BB King was also one of the planet’s consummate entertainers; his expansive stage presence, enveloping generosity of spirit, patent willingness to drive himself into the ground for his audiences and ability to put virtually any crowd at their ease took him from the backbreaking labour and harsh racism of the rural Southern states to the biggest stages of the world’s capital cities. As an old man he would duet on Sweet Home Chicago with Barack Obama at a gala blues concert in the White House. Along the way, he collected enough awards, trophies and honorary degrees to fill a small warehouse and was the subject of a biographical documentary feature, The Life of Riley, narrated by Morgan Freeman.
And, for what it’s worth, that “nice guy” bit was no mere act: 65 years in the business and absolutely no-one ever had a bad word to say about him. His generosity to peers and protégés alike was as much the stuff of legend as his manifest talents. For much of his performing life he averaged 300 shows a year and devoted any energy left over after each performance to meet and greet his fans until utter exhaustion set in. No wonder he was taken to the world’s collective heart in a manner unlike any blues artist before or since; no wonder he was called “The Chairman of the Board of Blues Singers.”
And yet, and yet, and yet … it was perhaps unsurprising that a man in his 80s who was drastically overweight and struggling with type 2 diabetes should have to slow down and acknowledge a decline in his once-formidable powers. For some time, he had been seated on stage rather than standing up; his concert schedule, which would have been intimidating for a performer half his age and weight, had been reduced to a mere 100 or so gigs a year, and he had not released a new album of fresh recordings since 2008’s One Kind Favor.
Yet his instrumental virtuosity and the seamless interaction between the liquid, vocal tone he conjured from the numerous Gibson semi-acoustic guitars that have borne the nickname “Lucille” over the past six-and-a-half decades and his warm, chesty singing (“First I sing and then Lucille sings”) was only one part of the reason for his pre-eminence not only in his chosen field of the blues but in the broader expanse of the past musical century’s popular mainstream. BB King was also one of the planet’s consummate entertainers; his expansive stage presence, enveloping generosity of spirit, patent willingness to drive himself into the ground for his audiences and ability to put virtually any crowd at their ease took him from the backbreaking labour and harsh racism of the rural Southern states to the biggest stages of the world’s capital cities. As an old man he would duet on Sweet Home Chicago with Barack Obama at a gala blues concert in the White House. Along the way, he collected enough awards, trophies and honorary degrees to fill a small warehouse and was the subject of a biographical documentary feature, The Life of Riley, narrated by Morgan Freeman.
And, for what it’s worth, that “nice guy” bit was no mere act: 65 years in the business and absolutely no-one ever had a bad word to say about him. His generosity to peers and protégés alike was as much the stuff of legend as his manifest talents. For much of his performing life he averaged 300 shows a year and devoted any energy left over after each performance to meet and greet his fans until utter exhaustion set in. No wonder he was taken to the world’s collective heart in a manner unlike any blues artist before or since; no wonder he was called “The Chairman of the Board of Blues Singers.”
And yet, and yet, and yet … it was perhaps unsurprising that a man in his 80s who was drastically overweight and struggling with type 2 diabetes should have to slow down and acknowledge a decline in his once-formidable powers. For some time, he had been seated on stage rather than standing up; his concert schedule, which would have been intimidating for a performer half his age and weight, had been reduced to a mere 100 or so gigs a year, and he had not released a new album of fresh recordings since 2008’s One Kind Favor.
When he played the Royal Albert Hall in June 2011, I wrote: “As his 86th birthday looms, BB King remains King of the Blues, with Buddy Guy, at a mere 75, as his heir. No surprise, then, that a long line of distinguished guests showed up at the Al to pay affectionate tribute and help the ancient titan shoulder the weight of a two-hour show: please meet and greet Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, Ron Wood, Slash and (to sing some of the lyrics BB can no longer remember) Mick Hucknall
“Also no surprise: the set is no longer a stately procession through 60-odd
years of greatest hits, but more a combination of party, informal jam session
and family visit to a mischievous, cantankerous but benevolent granddad.
Forgetting lyrics (and even the names of some of his long-serving band-members)
and occasionally starting a lick on the wrong fret of his guitar, BB’s
immaculate comic timing turned each potential embarrassment into an endearing
gag … The voice is still miraculous, once it’s cranked up, and that guitar tone
is still authoritatively unmistakable. He roared through The Thrill Is Gone,
Sweet Sixteen and Rock Me Baby, caught all the rock guitarists out with the
tricky chord changes of the glutinous Vegas ballad Guess Who and made his
triumphant exit to – shades of Louis Armstrong – When the Saints Go Marching
In. “Losing the plot? Maybe. But he’s still BB King ... and
nobody else is.”
Despite all attempts to put the most positive possible spin on the evening, the occasion was still somewhat dispiriting. The Big B had become a magnificent ruin, like the Coliseum or the Sphinx: a monument to be visited not in the hope of seeing it as it was in its halcyon days, but to marvel at the fact that it was still here and, indeed, that such something so marvellous existed in the first place. Last year, a concert at St Louis’s Peabody Opera House disintegrated into an outright debacle, with BB actually getting heckled as he rambled and stumbled through a formless attempt at recapturing former glories.
BB had always claimed that he would continue to perform as
long people still wanted to see him, but by the end it had come to seem as if
neither mind nor body were any longer equal to the task. He had the admiration
of his peers, the affection of much of the world and an eight-figure bank
account, none of which were anything less than fully deserved and thoroughly
earned. Maybe he should have made the decision to take it easy at last: to rest
on his considerable laurels and spend his last years taking pleasure in a
lifetime’s achievement: a job well done.
In 2010, he and Buddy Guy recorded an affecting duet entitled Stay Around a Little Longer. If only he could have been able to take his own advice: then he might have celebrated his 90th birthday this September by putting his feet up, secure in his extraordinary legacy and enjoying the knowledge that what he has left us is, for all practical purposes, immortal.
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