The 25 Hour News and The King is Dead
![B._B._King,_Audimax_Uni_Hamburg,_November_1971_(Heinrich_Klaffs_Collection_56)[1]](https://annaraccoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/B._B._King_Audimax_Uni_Hamburg_November_1971_Heinrich_Klaffs_Collection_561.jpg)
The death of Blues guitarist BB King at the age of 89 yesterday didn’t just mark the end of a life or even a career of impressive longevity; it severed the last remaining link with the roots of the twentieth century’s most innovative, explosive and enjoyable cultural revolution. Without BB King and his fellow Blues troubadours, most of whom were already approaching middle-age when their influence finally reached out of the segregated circuit they’d played for decades, the soundtrack that has shaped our listening habits would have been very different indeed.
King was so old he had been born on a cotton plantation in the Deep South; even the authenticity of his origins appear mythological, surrounded as he was by the realities of the world that formed the basis of rock ‘n’ roll’s lyrical landscape. As with Country, the folk music of white rural America, the Blues was an autobiographical format that black rural America felt an instinctive connection with because it translated their collective experiences into song – the draining monotony of menial labour, the struggle to make ends meet, and (perhaps most of all) what happens when your woman walks out.
In an era when there was little cultural exchange between black and white, the groundbreaking move from acoustic to electric guitars that BB King, along with contemporaries such as Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf and John Lee Hooker, helped pioneer went largely unnoticed outside of the parallel universe that had been labelled ‘Race Music’. But while mainstream America was tuned into the lush ballads of the crooners and torch singers, the uniquely harsh segregation of the South created circumstances that fed the curiosity of a generation of poor white kids. Alien sounds drifting across the late night airwaves from the other side of the tracks prompted them to pick up guitars and blend their Country traditions with the Blues.
While rock ‘n’ roll was swiftly stripped of the initial animalistic qualities that appalled Middle America as the mainstream absorbed its energy and Hollywood castrated Elvis, the Blues found a receptive audience across the Atlantic. Those raised in a nation struggling to recover from the exhaustive trauma of the Second World War found a truth and relevance in the Blues that spoke to them. Colour wasn’t an issue; it was all about context. From The Rolling Stones, The Pretty Things and The Yardbirds through to Cream, Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac, the Blues permeated the British music scene like no other American export has before or since. The veneration the Brit Bluesmen had for the founding fathers saw many of them flown over here to make a pretty penny on the road, received as rock royalty by enthusiastic audiences, some of whom were young enough to be their grandchildren.
America eventually recognised and rewarded its musical pioneers, culminating in BB King himself playing with Obama at the White House. Not bad for a Mississippi cotton-picker. But then, the legacy he leaves behind is with us every time we strap on our air guitars and let rip to our favourite riffs – riffs that he wrote more than half-a-century ago. The one-time omnipotence of the Blues may have faded from a mainstream music industry that has retreated back to the sanitised anaemia of Tin Pan Alley, but where ever there’s a crowd who like their sounds down, dirty and bluntly honest, there’ll always be a place for the Blues.
Petunia Winegum
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May 16, 2015 at 9:43 am -
And I, dear readers, was lucky enough to see BB King in concert at The Brighton Centre in September 1981. Fan-ruddy-tastic.
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May 16, 2015 at 6:51 pm -
I also was lucky enough to see him live at Portsmouth Guildhall on March 18th 1989 . I knew little about the man just that he was a great guitarist. Cost me just £7.50.
A real bargain.
Good week for shows that was. Id seen Blue Oyster Cult just three days previous. BB King and Eric Bloom in the same week. Would have been something had they been together on the same stage.
Guitar heaven!!!
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May 16, 2015 at 9:49 am -
I remember Ben E. King more than BB King but such is the mystery of history. I caught an “obituary” for the old guy on the BBC wireless last night. The obituary mostly featured the uninspiring singing voice of Obama. Being radio, I could only take their word for it that BB was actually there at all. The King is dead. Long live the King.
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May 16, 2015 at 9:56 am -
http://time.com/3860660/bb-king-guitar-lucille/
BB King explaining why he named his guitars Lucille …
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May 16, 2015 at 10:47 am -
I was introduced to the music of “MR BB King”, and also Tom Waits, one drunken night at my then Boss’ house in 1987(?) whilst drinking far too much Tennants Super and smoking my boss’ Golden Virginia – this being back in the days when a Head Social Worker (residential Care) might still drink and smoke in the confines of his own place and invite teenage co-workers to partake and listen to his collection of LPs.
BB King’s music and lyrics spoke to me so much in my period of youthful ‘white trashness’ , we seemed to have so much in common, that it wasn’t until a year or so later that I realized he was actually black. (when he appeared on TV with St Bono Of Vox a rattling ‘n a hummin’).
I kinda think that passes for an epitaph. Who says Black Non-Smokers can’t sing the Blues?
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May 16, 2015 at 11:43 am -
Sounds to me like you were being groomed…
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May 16, 2015 at 12:21 pm -
Sounds to me like you were being groomed…
Pet, you can’t know how incongruously funny that thought is….
Groomed to a world of actual real music beyond Johnny Rotten and Andrew Von Eldritch maybe, although he could never get me to prefer Golden Virginia over actual real tobacco. My Boss at the time had pulled himself up out of the Gobals and was of that ‘old school’ Residential Care , the ‘talk soft and carry a broken bottle’, sort. Had any passing DJ tried to sexually molest the boys in his care then he would have gone ‘Rajch’ or ‘Castle Milk’ on them. …or simply have ‘forgotten’ to disarm the boys before the visitor next arrived. No, I’m not joking, and if I recall Savile was nominally a catholic and the thought of any sash wearing kid from Pennywell Gardens even allowing a PAPIST into their bedroom let alone their trousers… .
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May 16, 2015 at 10:59 am -
Hope you won’t come to regret the eulogizing obituary, Petunia – I read yesterday that King had started out as that most terrible of things: a radio DJ!
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May 16, 2015 at 11:44 am -
The cotton-pickin’ son-of-a-bitch!
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May 16, 2015 at 12:37 pm -
The cotton-pickin’ son-of-a-bitch!
Be grateful for the small mercy of it having been a cotton not a tobacco plantation…BB might have been the fASHites poster boy otherwise. Look what they did to Spock (and I ain’t talking Benjamin McLane)?
I quote from yesterday’s NY DAILY NEWS (lowercasedotcom etcetc):
“His longevity, in some ways, came in spite of the way he lived, or at least the way he ate. The road is a sedentary place to start with, and King suffered for years from diabetes even as he declined to abandon the foods of his childhood – fried and sweet. or a snack during an interview, he might finish off a fried egg and cheese sandwich with a side order of fries.
“I’m a Southerner,” he said. “I like the kind of food I’d be having at home.”
On the other hand, he quit smoking(like it is a good thing? My italics) after the first alarming Surgeon General’s report . He also quit drinking.”
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May 16, 2015 at 2:42 pm -
I saw The BB King’s obituary and Obama’s appearance on same. This man was certainly the forerunner, and lead in to some great guitarists, who have followed in his shadow. Even The Queen guy, who is getting old himself now, was on Question Time. I only watched it because Queen guy was on it, otherwise Dimblebum irritates me beyond measure. Lifelong lover of Blues, Bluegrass and Country but never been to a festival. Should do that before I clog it, but too much hassle.
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May 16, 2015 at 3:26 pm -
I always liked King but Chuck Berry is the man, even though he is nowhere near as likeable.
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May 16, 2015 at 5:39 pm -
May I admit my ignorance by saying that I had never heard of the gentleman?
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May 16, 2015 at 6:59 pm -
This is the problem A+TA, musically we’re victims of our childhood, (Lollipop, A white sports coat, Heartbreak Hotel), our adolescence, (Eddie Cochrane, Buddy Holly), our twenties, (Whiter Shade of Pale seemed to right for overnighters), and late 20s rebirth, ELO, Joni, Carole King, the late dearest was into Emmy Lou & the ‘At Seventeen’ girl who’s name escapes me, & James Taylor. I don’t think much has happened since, though somewhere in there were Beatles & Stones, and Dr Hook.
That’s how it was for me; sadly I’ve still got some vinyl & repaired the old turntable a few months back- sod the CDs. They’re too thin.
But who the hell is going to buy Peter Skellern, Cat Stevens, or Elton John LPs at a car boot sale?-
May 16, 2015 at 8:39 pm -
Janis Ian – ‘At Seventeen’.
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May 16, 2015 at 10:57 pm -
Thanks Pet, I can still see the sleeve in my mind, I won’t get it out.
Was taken by the dearest to see her perform at Burgess Hill; a long time ago.
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May 16, 2015 at 7:06 pm -
BB King was, as has been pointed out so elegantly by our host ‘…last remaining link with the roots of the twentieth century’s most innovative, explosive and enjoyable cultural revolution.’
Let us mourn the passing of a great man. Without him and his ilk where would we be, musically now?? I am glad many of those august guitarists, such as Clapton, have acknowledged their debt.
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May 16, 2015 at 9:14 pm -
Extremely well written Petunia. I saw him first when I was 16, and many times since. He was an artist and a gentleman, the last of his line.
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May 17, 2015 at 7:55 am -
BB was one of the great blues guitarists. Indirectly, I suppose I took it up because of him because he inspired the likes of Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton and it was those guys that hooked me.
I never really liked his music because it was a style before my time born as it was in the big band era but he sure as hell could express the maximum emotion with the minimum of notes. Unlike many of the modern day, he knew when to play and when to leave silence. He never felt the need to show off how good he was and that was what made him so good.
It was my great privilege to play very briefly with John Mayall during the great British blues boom and without BB that would never have happened.
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