"My life - this is a common blues history, because the blues - this is a simple music and I - a simple man. I am a lonely man and little talk, words are not my friends. I talk through music: the sounds, notes, rhythms. Music is international, it is not necessary to switch it out of politics. "
Youth
"I was born in 1925 in the village of Ben, state Missiscippi. His parents divorced when I was about four.
At the age of nine years, I lost my mother, her death was the biggest shock in my life. I was left alone and my best friends were animals.
Childhood I spent in the cotton plantations, where in 1943 joined the army. There I learned to drive a car and, on returning, received a prestigious job tractor ". "For the first time I heard the music in the church. My mother sang in the church choir, and preacher Archie Fair enjoyed playing guitar. Once he came with his guitar. I touched the wooden case, touched the strings, and they reacted to my touch. I imagined how to play it and sing ...
Soon Fair taught me how to extract from it the sounds and showed chords ". "My first acoustic guitar for $ 15 called Stella. Next was the acoustic Gibson, I bought it in Memphis, with the help of my cousin (Bukka White (Bukka White) - known bluesman 40-ies), money to buy an electric guitar was not. I beat almost all the guitars: Fender, Gretch, Silverstone, Gibson. I remember the first time, worked as a musician ... My tractor was burned from overheating, and I was afraid, and picked up his guitar and ran away to Memphis, but then returned and told the owner the truth, and promised to pay. In Memphis, I met Sonny Boy Williamson (Sonny Boy Williamson), who helped to make a little commercial on the first "black" radio station "WDIA".
And then the bar owner gave me a job, I played six nights a week for 12 $ per day, plus housing and a table. Tractor I got $ 22.50 a week, and then 12 $ per day! Later I became a disc jockey with his hour program. I was called "Blues Boy", in my own way - "Bi Bi". I was more known as a singer, guitar playing does not matter. Then, and now, I was mad about Lonnie Johnson (Lonnie Johnson), Schuller Christian, Charlie (Charlie Christian), Elmore James (Elmore James). In those years, my game was very limited, few ideas, my fingers are not able to repeat heard, but as a singer I had a Style ".
About music and musicians
"When I spoke at the New York Theater Apollo, among the audience were critics, wrote:" BB
King and his guitar singing ", it gave me a burst of energy. Suppose I do not play complex parties, my music is simple, but when I play solo, I hear how I sing, I sing through the guitar ".
"It's like Bon Ty Walker (T-Bone Walker), in his phrasing every sound of something said. No need to play sixty-four notes per cycle, often a beat, says much more ". "I never accompanies himself does not know how to play and sing at the same time, plus anything not speak Arts rhythm guitarist, but I know a few chords". "Many people really like my vibrato, but there is nothing unusual, my fingers were like wood, I never knew how to play slide, as for example, Bukka White. Still, some things really resembles a slide, and say that I'm playing a little better than forty years ago ". "I listen to a lot of different music, old and modern. You can always find something new for myself, my collection of about thirty thousand records. In this hard to believe, but true. The houses around me records, tapes, discs and nothing else ".
"Muddy Waters (Muddy Waters) and John Lee Hooker (John Lee Hooker) - my contemporaries, I love them. When I picked cotton, they have played. Buddy Guy (Buddy Guy) and Robert Cray (Robert Cray) - excellent guitar players and very good people. If they do something, only good, or not doing at all. "
"I knew Elmore James, it was a real bluesman, who could be very different: in-game slide - one finger - a completely different".
Albert
King (Albert
King) made a lot of good songs. He used his thumb instead of a mediator and made the guitar cry. The same was the great Freddie
King (Freddie
King), he was already a monster when he arrived from Texas. We love Freddy more major, and Albert - Minor. Recently, another left my good friend and a true bluesman Albeta Collins (Albert Collins) ".
"Over time, music changes. In the 60's a lot of people played the blues, some died, others are playing something else. And only one of them, an Englishman, Eric Clapton, returned. His blues are as good as all that he does. I remember him as a boy. Blues he plays with feeling, hearing him, you know - yes, it's the Blues "" Today there are new guys - Robert Cray, Jeff Healey (Jeff Healey), Stevie Ray Vaughan (Stevie Ray Vayghan), Joe Louis Walker (Joe Lous Walker). And the life of blues, albeit in a slightly different form, continues ". "I always feel like a pilot in the plane, which knows little about his device, but flies. Also I do not know about the guitar and amp, but I play, or try to fly. Many are interested in how I seek such a guitar sound, and I say - this is how my voice, it is only mine! "
.
.
BBKING - grief at the loss-BLACK.
.
BBKING "BLUES MASTER" - I, II, III.
