Tune Tuesday

Happy 100th birthday to the King of the Blues – BB King!  He was born in the Mississippi Delta and was attracted to music and taught himself to play guitar. The beginning his career was in juke joints and on local radio. It was later that he lived and performed in Memphis and Chicago.

One of my favorite BB King stories is how his guitar got its name.  It happened in Twist, Arkansas one night during one of his shows.  A brawl broke out between two men and caused a fire. He left the building with the rest of the crowd but ran back in to get his guitar. He said he later learned that the two men were fighting over a woman named Lucille. He named the guitar Lucille as a reminder not to fight over women, or run into any more burning buildings.

The song The Thrill is Gone was written and originally recorded by the blues musician Roy Hawkins in 1951. In the 1950s, BB was a Memphis radio DJ who played the Roy Hawkins original on the air. The song is about moving on from a relationship that has gone bad.

King recorded the song several times but didn’t like any of the results. Producer Bill Szymczyk (most famous for producing the Eagles) called King at 4:00 a.m. and suggested the addition of strings (King later said that he’d agree to just about anything at that time of the night). The addition polished up the recording that gave him his first million-selling record.

The song won him a Grammy in 1970 for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. In 1980 he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame while in1987 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006. Those are just a few of his many accolades.

BB King passed away on May 14, 2015 at age 89. He was one of the most influential blues musicians of all time.  Allmusic recognized King as “the single most important electric guitarist of the last half of the 20th century”. I would agree!

Happy Birthday, BB!