B. B. King - How Blue Can You Get?
Christmas and New Year's Eve bring on the feeling for me of, "Is this
all there is?" The blues follows close behind, and no one embodied the
blues better than B.B. King. He was born September 16,
1925, on a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, near Indianola. In his
youth, he played on street corners for dimes, and would sometimes play
in as many as four towns a night. In 1947, he hitchhiked to Memphis, TN,
to pursue his music career.
His
economy of style, his every-note-counts phrasing, has been a model for
thousands of players, from Eric Clapton and George Harrison to Jeff
Beck.
King
performed tirelessly throughout his musical career, appearing on
average at more than 200 concerts per year into his 70s. He often joked
that he kept touring because of his need to keep up the child support
payments (It is reported that he fathered 15 children with several
different women. After his death, three more have come forward, claiming
King as their father as well.) He was still touring in 2014, but the
tour was cut short due to health problems and he died in May, 2015.
This recording from 1989 when B. B. was 64 years old shows him still in his prime.
