Porque a guitarra de BB King é chamada de "Lucile"?

Em breve disponibilizaremos um vídeo com legenda!

Mas pra quem tem o inglês mais afiado já pode acompanhar no vídeo abaixo ;)

Turnê Australiana anunciada!

Seu reinado como o Rei do Blues foi tão longa como a de qualquer outro monarca na terra, e hoje estamos felizes em anunciar que o BB King estará fazendo seu retorno aguardado para a Austrália em abril de 2011. Já anunciado para Bluesfest Byron Bay, ele também vai estar fazendo shows em Sydney e Melbourne!

B. B. King - The Thrill Is Gone (From B. B. King - Live at Montreux 1993)

B.B. King is the greatest living exponent of the blues and considered by many to be the most influential guitarist of the latter part of the 20th century. His career dates back to the late forties and despite now being in his eighties he remains a vibrant and charismatic live performer. B.B. King has been a frequent visitor to the Montreux festival, appearing nearly 20 times, so choosing one performance was no easy task. This 1993 concert will surely rank as one of his finest at any venue. With a superb backing band and a great set list its a must for any blues fan.

For more info -

http://www.eagle-rock.com/artist/5465...

Guess Who - Live Performance

Album Review: The Best of B.B. King [MCA]

By LESTER BANGS

In spite of 1972 being one of the stalest years in the history of popular music, the spate of reissues from all the major record companies and countless minor ones picks up more speed all the time, and the results (uneven as they are) are generally encouraging. All four of these albums represent attempts both at recapitulating the contributions of three black titans and cashing in on the belated widespread recognition of those contributions. Curtis Mayfield had a long string of hits with the Impressions but it took Super Fly to make him a household name. Ray Charles may have been bigger in the late Fifties and early Sixties than he is now, but he was more vital then, too. His earlier work deserves the endless repackaging. As for B.B. King, I can still remember the first time I saw a couple of kids in a department store line, audibly opting to chance $3.50 on an album called Lucille because some Limey speedfreaks had made it hip, and I'm sure that both they and I are glad they did, but B.B. King's career didn't begin when the royalties began pouring in from flash guitar covers and he was invited to tour with the Rolling Stones, so a thoughtful collection of vintage King is imperative.

Ray Charles doesn't have as many hits these days as he used to, but he's more renowned than ever before anyway. He's become something of a national institution, like the Duke Ellington of R&B; even Pres Nixon has made an official declaration of Charles fandom. But the Pres ain't exactly the type to do back-flips for "What'd I Say" or "The Right Time," and Ray's been hacking his way ever deeper into the tissue veldts of MOR for a full decade now. He still makes a good record every once in a while, but in his prime he was raunchy enough to split your skull and rock you into fundamentalist frothing fits. He created rock 'n' roll as much as Berry or Little Richard or anybody; he practically drew up the blue-prints for an entire era of gritty Stax R&B, and nobody ever wrenched their way deeper into the soaring terror of the blues. If you want to hear him really rip the joint apart and put it back together again with a cry, go back to those great Atlantic sides. The essence is on three albums: The Genius of Ray Charles. The Genius Sings the Blues and The Greatest Ray Charles. Or, for a fantastic overview, Atlantic's four-record compilation The Ray Charles Story.

Ray's move from Atlantic to ABC made him rich and, initially at least, the musical rewards were probably as bountiful as ever and an idiomatic breakthrough besides. In search of a buck-grabbing formula, ABC sent him through albums like The Genius Hits the Road ("Georgia on My Mind," "Mississippi Mud," "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" etc.), and miraculously he came up with brilliant, deeply soulful amalgams of gospel roots and mainstream pop. But the real turning point was a record called Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music, which was released about 12 years ago, at which time it promptly became the Number One album in America and changed the face of the milder strains of radio pop as irrevocably as his early work had done for rock 'n' roll. All through the Sixties the marriage of C&W to blues or bluesy euphemisms reigned, and whether you picked up on Glenn Campbell or Lee Hazelwood or any one of the rest of the multitude exploiting this new form, it all began with Ray Charles.

Ray himself exploited his innovation till the power of the original purveyor began to pale, and not everything on All-Time Great Country & Western Hits is great. But enough of the prime is here to make it worthwhile, especially if you haven't picked up any of the many previous Charles reissues. "I Can't Stop Loving You" was his first big move at this amalgam, and it's still as tearfully puissant today as it was in 1961. Add the occasional C&W standard rendered in R&B style fully as uncompromising as any early Charles (the boiling "You Are My Sunshine" being the earliest and most potent example here), and you have a record as profound and essential as anything out today.

Lots of people think the Super Fly soundtrack the best soul album of 1972, but those unfamiliar with the Impressions owe it to themselves to discover what Curtis Mayfield was up to in the times before the most vital expression of black music was almost forced to deal with heroin death. "Freddie's Dead" is already a Seventies standard, and His Early Years with the Impressions is a fine reminder that Mayfield possessed a consistent gift for creating hits destined to become classics all through his career. The vocal harmonies of the Impressions could be as mellow a balm as anything by Smokey Robinson and, like Robinson, Mayfield was never saccharine.

In fact, this late rehearsing of his past achievements impresses you firmly, even if you missed it first time around, with the fact that Mayfield was a groundbreaker in the nascent status of black popular music as a direct expression of the changes in black consciousness. When "Keep On Pushing" was a hit it was fairly easy to find shadings of meaning in its lyrics which formed as clear a link between the oldest gospel message and something far more topical, as it was to revel in the perfect evolutionary link between the purely musical freight carried out of church and the AM soul stylings which reached their summit in the mid-Sixties.

"It's All Right" illuminates the same historic junction, and "We're A Winner" takes it out of the realm of ambiguity, straight across the threshold of blatant backbeat radio anthem. Meanwhile, if you're only familiar with things like "Gypsy Woman" in the eviscerated cover versions of white fluff-boys, get ready to be moved to the shoals of your soul by a whole other, more masterful and authentic type of vocal dramatics.

Again, the packaging is pretty bland, and another caveat is that lots of this stuff has been observed in the original albums selling for far less in bargain bins around the country (plus the fact that lots of those original packages were a joy in their very crassness, like that great Keep On Pushing cover observed among Dylan's most conspicuously prized possessions on the Bringin' It All Back Home jacket). But if Super Fly was your introduction to Curtis, you'll want to make a point of picking this up before his pre-soundtrack solo albums, which qualitatively fall way below both what preceded and followed them.

B.B. King has in his belated flush of success become almost as frustrating for the aficionado of the Real Shit as Ray Charles. B.B. plays Vegas now, no fault there, and hits both the colleges and TV talk shows. So he's finally out of the scuffle, at late long last. Unfortunately, his music has also gotten less interesting with each successive album. Vintage King wasn't just something for punks to prove they could tell a good blues guitar solo from a bad one; it was stark, evil stuff. Troubled and troubling.

The difference between these two B.B. albums is the difference between chills and chips, between hearing a raw edge that makes Back in the Alley more than just a good colorful title, and satisfying your curiosity about how B.B. King would work in the context of a standard Leon Russell Hollywood camp meeting.

And it's not just a matter of backalleys vs. proximity to pop-stars: There is just no way a cut from the legendary Live at the Regal album, which molded countless Sixties guitarists and stands alongside things like James Brown at the Apollo as one of the all-time classic in-person R&B disks, there is no way something like that is not gonna shut down a pleasantly perfunctory session cut at Cook County Jail two or three years after Johnny Cash made it both righteously hip and fiscally sound to jam for jailbirds.

Actually, the chronological distance between the two albums is not all that great. Back in the Alley begins in 1964 and leaves off just short of where The Best of B.B. King picks up, but the difference in mood and meat is sufficient to make the choice clear, even if Best Of does have the incredible "The Thrill Is Gone." It's the fine line between a man playing with total commitment to an audience he has probably had for years which can savor his peaks and bear an off night, and a man playing for people who've been sold his legend and will love anything because they know they're supposed to. But you don't have to be any kind of connoisseur to tell the difference.

Album Review: King of Blues 1989

By JIMMY GUTERMAN

B.B. King is the greatest non-Chicago postwar urban bluesman, but in his later years he has cast wildly for styles, attempting to make himself "contemporary" in all the worst ways, masking his gifts as a singer and guitar player. King is a pure, unassailable bluesman, yet King of the Blues: 1989 is another mediocre attempt to make a timeless genius timely. Not that he can't be up-to-date and inspiring; on U2's Rattle and Hum, the sixty-three-year-old master takes over "When Love Comes to Town" from Bono with assurance and verve.

King remains a ferocious singer, so he can even make straight pop work for him sometimes: King of the Blues: 1989 offers a harsh take on Gamble and Huff's "Drowning in the Sea of Love." But King, suffocated by more synthesizers than you might find in Thomas Dolby's house, is generally lost on this album. For four decades, King has been a superlative bandleader, but on King of the Blues: 1989, his still-titanic talents are wasted.

BB King

2001 encyclopedia

B.B. King is the most famous of the modern bluesmen. Playing his trademark Gibson guitar, which he refers to affectionately as Lucille, King's lyrical leads and left-hand vibrato have influenced numerous rock guitarists, including Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. A fifteen-time Grammy winner, King has received virtually every music award, including the Grammy for Lifetime Achievement in 1987.

Born Riley B. King on September 16, 1925, in Itta Bena, Mississippi, he picked cotton as a youth. In the Forties he played on the streets of Indianola before moving on to perform professionally in Memphis around 1949. As a young musician, he studied recordings by both blues and jazz guitarists, including T-Bone Walker, Charlie Christian, and Django Reinhardt.

In the early Fifties King was a disc jockey on the Memphis black station WDIA, where he was dubbed the "Beale Street Blues Boy." Eventually, Blues Boy was shortened to B.B., and the nickname stuck. The radio show and performances in Memphis with friends Johnny Ace and Bobby "Blue" Bland built King?s strong local reputation. One of his first recordings, "Three O?Clock Blues" (Number One R&B), for the RPM label, was a national success in 1951. During the Fifties, King was a consistent record seller and concert attraction.

King?s 1965 Live at the Regal is considered one of the definitive blues albums. The mid-Sixties blues revival introduced him to white audiences, and by 1966 he was appearing regularly on rock concert circuits and receiving airplay on progressive rock radio. He continued to have hits on the soul chart ("Paying the Cost to Be the Boss," Number Ten R&B, 1968) and always maintained a solid black following. Live and Well was a notable album, featuring "Why I Sing the Blues" (Number 13 R&B, 1969) and King?s only pop Top Twenty single, "The Thrill Is Gone" (Number 15 pop, Number Three R&B, 1970).

In the Seventies King also recorded albums with longtime friend and onetime chauffeur Bobby Bland: the gold Together for the First Time...Live (1974) and Together Again...Live (1976). Stevie Wonder produced King?s "To Know You Is to Love You." In 1982 King recorded a live album with the Crusaders.

King?s tours have taken him to Russia (1979), South America (1980), and to dozens of prisons. In 1981 There Must Be a Better World Somewhere won a Grammy Award; he won another in 1990 for Live at San Quentin. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. In 1990 he received the Songwriters Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award. In May 1991, he opened B.B. King?s Blues Club in Memphis. (A second one opened in New York City in 2000.)

In 1989 he sang and played with U2 on "When Love Comes to Town," from their Rattle and Hum. The four-disc box set released that same year, King of the Blues, begins with King?s career-starting single "Miss Martha King," originally released on Bullet in 1949. For Blues Summit, in 1993, King was joined by such fellow bluesmen as John Lee Hooker, Lowell Fulson, and Robert Cray.

King once said he aspired to be an "ambassador of the blues," and by the Nineties he seemed to have attained just that iconic status. In 1995 he received the Kennedy Center Honors. The next year saw the publication of his award-winning autobiography, Blues? All Around Me (coauthored with David Ritz).

In 2000 the double-platinum Riding With the King (with Eric Clapton) topped Billboard?s Top Blues Albums chart. King continued to record, perform and win honors during the first decade of the 2000s. President George W. Bush awarded King the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006. Two years later, he released one of the most critically acclaimed studio albums of his career, the back-to-the-basics One Kind Favor, produced by T Bone Burnett and featuring King doing stripped-down version of blues classics such as Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean."

Portions of this biography appeared in The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001). Mark Kemp contributed to this article.

A Brief History

Riley B. King was born in Indianola, Mississippi, on September 16, 1925. He took the stage name, B. B. King, after being dubbed the "Beale Street Blues Boy," while employed as a disc jockey at WDIA in Memphis in the early 1950s. One of his first recordings, Three O’Clock Blues, was a national success. So popular was the young musician that in 1956 he booked an unbelievable 342 one-night performances!

The story of why King decided to call his guitars "Lucille" dates back to 1949. While King played at a club in Twist, Arkansas, a fight broke out between two men over a woman named Lucille. A barrel of kerosene that was being used to heat the building was knocked over and started a fire. King almost lost his life, while trying to save his guitar. Consequently, he started calling them "Lucille," as a reminder never again to be so foolish. On his 1968 album, Lucille, he wrote, "I've had many guitars—and always call them Lucille. She's taken me a long way, even bought me some fame—most of all, she's kept me alive, being able to eat. Sometimes I get to a place I can't even say nothing—sometimes when I'm blue, seems Lucille tries to help me, calls my name—she's just like a woman, and that's the only one I've had that seemed I could really depend on. I've been married and each time separated—but Lucille never separates from me. She always stayed with me."

Throughout the 1990s as well as the 1980s, 1970s, 1960s and 1950s, there has been only one King of the Blues - Riley B. King, affectionately known as B.B. King. Since B.B. started recording in the late 1940s, he has released over 50 albums many of them considered blues classics, like 1965's definitive live blues album "Live At The Regal", and 1976's collaboration with Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Together For The First Time".

B.B. King forever!

Este blog trará conteúdo exclusivo sobre o incrível cantor e guitarrista de blues B.B. King. Vídeos, letras de músicas, tablaturas/partituras, notícias e muito mais!