RIP BB King

Ray Sachs

Legend
Location
Not too far from Philly
Name
you should be able to figure it out...
Sad sad day today.

I first saw BB in 1977 (which is frighteningly close to 40 years ago - good Lord) in a small club in Seattle and saw him a few times over the next 20 years or so. Hadn't seen him in a long time and every time he came around I'd think "I should go see him - I'm not gonna have too many more chances". I guess that'll never happen now, but I'm happy I was able to when I did.

That guy had the sweetest vibrato of any blues player I ever heard. He could say more with one note than most guys could with 100. Not the rawest blues guy out there - we had Muddy Waters for that, but just an incredible sound from that semi-hollow Gibson.

He's gone, but as long as his music lives on, the thrill is NOT gone!

-Ray
 
My wife had BB cranking at 7AM this morning after hearing the news. We saw him quite a few times back in the 90s. No one played blues guitar like him. As Ray points out, just a smooth and sweet sound.
 
That's great Steve. I've been wearing out YouTube over the past couple of days. Here's a really nice medley with Bobby Bland, from about the time I first saw him, in '77. He'd put on a bit of girth since your earlier video. This is sort of cleaned up for TV, but I always loved the way BB and Bobby sang together...


-Ray
 
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