It’s safe to say that B.B. King was a Gibson man through and through. Aside from his brief dalliance with a Fender Esquire in the ’50s, B.B.’s favoured first-call guitars all started their lives at a Gibson factory.

The teenaged Blues Boy’s first instrument was a modest L-30 f-hole acoustic bought around 1940, soon going electric with a retrofit DeArmond pickup.

In the ’50s, as well as that Fender Esquire, he played a few other Gibsons, including a Byrdland, an ES-125 or an ES-175, as well as an ES-5N – influenced by his hero T-Bone Walker, who used an identical instrument.

By the early years of the ’60s, B.B. had settled on a sunburst ES-335 with Bigsby, a custom order with a 345-style Varitone switch and stereo wiring. Occasionally, he played a regular 345, but this 335/345 was clearly a favourite of B.B.’s, likely the guitar he played on his legendary Live At The Regal recording in November ’64.

Later in the ’60s, B.B. shifted to the model that’s now most associated with him. Gibson’s top semi-solid, the ES-355, was a luxurious guitar that seemed the right kind of high-end instrument for a musician considered by then to be one of America’s most impressive bluesmen.

B.B. continued to attract new fans, swelling the ranks of the blues faithful, and maintained his seemingly endless life on the road and in the studio. Meanwhile, Gibson decided to build on its successful endorsement deal with B.B. to develop a signature model, thanks mostly to the enthusiasm of the company’s R&D boss Bruce Bolen and salesman Dennis Chandler.

The first signs of this closer link to B.B. had come in the shape of a one-off guitar that Bolen presented to B.B. in 1978.

This ornate 355 had floral fingerboard markers like those of the contemporary Les Paul Artisan, and engraved into the tailpiece cover was a touching message: “To B.B. King: An artist’s music represents his sensitivity, growth, and way of life. A legend in your own time, this guitar is a symbol of our growth together. With sincere appreciation, Your friends at Gibson.”

B.B. played that guitar for a few years, but by summer 1980 he’d switched to another new Gibson, a prototype much closer to the forthcoming signature model. Bolen had explained to B.B. that its body would not have f-holes, to allow for more volume with less feedback – and the visual bonus of a sleekly distinctive look.

Production versions finally appeared during 1981: the B.B. King Standard, with a list price of $1,389, and the B.B. King Custom, at $1,789. They had several Gibson high-end features, including Crank fold-out tuner winders, a TP-6 fine-tuning tailpiece, a Tune-o-matic mounted into Sustain Sisters brass studs, two ‘Pat-Appl-For’ humbuckers, and stereo circuitry.

The Custom boasted gold-plated metalwork and a Varitone, while the Standard had chrome-plated hardware and regular controls.

The Standard lasted only a few years, but a Custom-like model is still in the line today as the B.B. King Lucille Legacy, alongside an Epiphone B.B. King Lucille.

Through most of his long and successful career, B.B. played a series of 355s, each one in turn known to him as Lucille. Quite how many Lucilles there were is unclear, although in his 1996 autobiography B.B. said he was already up to Lucille number 16.

Back in 1969, when Gibson and B.B. signed their endorsement deal, BB soon began to appear in publicity material.

A striking ad from the early ’70s celebrates “the man and the woman” – B.B. King is the man, of course, and “Lucille, the King’s Gibson guitar” is the woman. “They’ve been places few ever dream of getting,” ran the ad’s copy.

“To the bluest. The lostest. The downest. To the top of the heap. The mountain. The world. If you’re going places on the guitar, wouldn’t it be great to travel with a woman like Lucille?”

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

When Jerry Jemmott got the call to work with B.B. King on his Live & Well record in 1969, he was far from a new kid on the block. Jemmott was a go-to session bassist for Atlantic and so was brimming with confidence when he slung his bass over his shoulder and hit the studio.

“I was a jazz cat, but I grew up knowing B.B. King as The King of the Blues,” Jemmott says of his early impressions of the guitarist. “He was dedicated to it down to the bone, but he liked jazz also. I found him to be humble, fearless, intuitive and quick-witted.”

Jemmott recalls working on the Well side of Live & Well over two nights in New York City. He, along with several other studio aces, laid down so much music that King ended up with enough material for two follow-up records: 1969’s Completely Well and 1970’s Indianola Mississippi Seeds.

After that, Jemmott didn’t see B.B. until 1982, when they rekindled their friendship, which lasted until the end of King’s life.

As for how working with King impacted him, Jemmott smiles, saying: “I would go on from there to record My Way with Irene Reid, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised with Gil Scott-Heron, and the Live At Fillmore West albums with Aretha and King Curtis. But bringing B.B. King’s music and legacy to the world of popular music was an honour I will treasure and something he would never let me forget.”

What led you to work with B.B. in the late ’60s?

Bill Symzyck was producing the B.B. King ‘live at the Village Gate’ album, Live & Well. He said that he had only 20 minutes of good, quality-sounding material and convinced the record label to produce a studio album to complete the time needed for a full album.

He called on drummer Herb Lovelle, who – with bassist Leonard Gaskin – had made Bob Dylan’s first successful studio album, Free Wheelin’. They ended up calling me to play bass for the Well side of the record, which was in the studio.

It must have been a thrill to get that call.

I got the call to do the session from Herb Lovelle at Jerry Ragovoy’s legendary Hit Factory on 47th Street, where we often worked and were booked for two nights from seven to 10 at night, and 11 to two in the morning in the summer of 1969. These were normally live sessions with charts, no tracking. We all went down together: rhythm section, horns and vocals.

What was it like working with B.B. on those sessions, and what tracks did you record?

These 1969 sessions, where Why I Sing the Blues and The Thrill Is Gone were recorded, demanded my utmost attention and were so much fun. His aura was something to behold, standing in front of me with Lucille and a legal pad full of lyrics on a music stand, playing and singing with the conviction that is common among all great artists.

Did the songs come together off the cuff, or did BB have pre-written ideas for you to play?

He was the only one who had anything written out initially, and we would write out stuff once we established our parts as needed. Herb Lovelle, Hugh McCracken, Al Kooper and later Paul Harris co-signed my unique interpretation of his music.

When [B.B.] said in an interview for Guitar Player that “[Jerry] never does anything just because it’s right to do, he likes to do it because it feels good doing it”, it reminded me how perceptive and adventurous he was during those sessions that were so much fun.

What was B.B. like when he put his guitar down?

We had a good time groovin’ with The King. I remember him telling me that Billy Butler was the [soul/jazz] guitar player whom he admired most, and that he would put a lot of treble on his amp to get the sound he wanted out of Lucille. Working and being in his presence was magical.

How do you look back on your playing during those sessions with B.B.?

Well, Bass Player magazine would go on to say, ‘There is a problem in analysing Jerry Jemmott’s transcendent funk-blues grooves with B.B. King; it’s tough to maintain focus while you’re shaking your butt off!” [laughs] Contrary to what Bill Symzyck has said, we were not ‘young blues musicians’.

Except for the keyboard players, me, Herb and Hugh had recorded together in a variety of genres quite often. And it was Herb’s idea – who assisted in all of the mixing from the very first session onward – to put strings on The Thrill Is Gone when they were mixing and contracted the brilliant arranger, Bert DeCoteaux.

Take note that after B.B. sings the first two bars, Herb plays the back beat only on beat 4, which complements my relentless samba groove, and he continues this pattern when B.B. sings, to the very end. This gave B.B. the support he needed to tell his story.

There was a method to our madness! Between those June and November sessions, we recorded so much music that there was enough left over to go onto two albums, Completely Well and Indianola Mississippi Seeds.

Did you get to hook up with B.B. again later in life?

It wasn’t until 1982 that we would meet again. I went to his show in Newark, New Jersey, and as I entered his dressing room after the show, he announced to everyone who I was, got down on his knees and bowed, waving his arms up and down [laughs]. I was never so embarrassed, but he was that passionate and true in his sincerity.

Over the next 30 years, I would check in on him every so often. Anybody who’s worked for him will have a similar story to tell of his vast expressions of honesty and compassion.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

As a young boy, by way of his father who was involved in the music business, a young Billy Gibbons got the chance to sit in and watch B.B. King do his thing live and in the flesh while in the studio.

Surely, this would have impacted anyone, let alone an aspiring young six-stringer. But judging by Gibbons’ ZZ-Top catalogue, which includes big-time hits and even bigger and very old-school bluesy-meets-rock licks, one could say that said studio foray impacted Gibbons more than most.

As for what he learned as a child watching a legend like King, Gibbons tells Guitarist: “The importance of some serious professionalism at that moment took hold. B.B. and company were, well… they were gettin’ down to business with no foolin’ ‘round.”

Later in life, Gibbons got to know King on a personal level, as well as a professional one. It was only then that he learned the veteran blues icon wasn’t just a hell of a player but a quality person to boot.

“B.B. was all about respecting the opportunity to become a spokesperson of a style [that] was inherited,” Gibbons says. “And then, he developed that style to the level that enthralled friends, fans and followers at every turn.”

Nowadays, Gibbons is the old-guard professor with a guitar in hand who’s impacting millions. It’s the way of things – a proverbial passing of the blues-guitar torch. But even now, when he has a quiet moment, Gibbons still looks back on King’s body of work.

“The early releases found from the Kent label’s catalogue are all worth a deep review,” Gibbons says of his favourites. “The classic shapes of tone and feel continued to surround B.B.’s works right up to the climax of his output. Great stuff, all[-around].

You have a history with B.B. King. For those who don’t know, how did you end up sitting in on a session with him as a young boy?

Interesting encounter, to say the least! A visit to Bill Holford’s ACA Studios in Texas allowed me to jump aboard my dad’s ride to make the trip. Upon arrival, my dad said, ‘Take a seat over in that chair as a band is coming in to make a record!’

Next thing I knew, some guys came in and began arranging some gear, and then I spotted a guitar case entering through the side door… carried by none other than B.B. King. I remained quiet, yet at the same time something exciting was unfolding. When they kicked it in, I knew that was for me!

Gotta say, at seven years old, everything’s still quite new, and being in that room at that moment was simply beyond.

Did sitting in on that session with B.B. do anything to stoke your passion for guitar, or was that a runaway train, so to speak?

No question about it. The impact of that event zeroed in on the sound of electricity and hasn’t changed since. Coincidentally, [at a much later point in time] the sound of an unexpected B.B. shoutout stretched across an avenue in Las Vegas and, as it turned out, we were both residing just a stone’s throw down the same lane!

Upon invitation, we immediately gathered round and reignited a serious friendship, taking on the troubles of the world [laughs.] And then began delving into the depths, going way, way back, touching on Texas, Memphis and Mississippi.

Then there was the impact of some solid spiritual meaning, which appeared to have taken us both to that thing we called ‘the burden’, aka the electric six-string. Great tales ensued and the exchanges became ingrained with a sense of a righteous appreciation of this great American art form, the blues.

As you got older and more experienced as a listener and player, what did you notice about B.B. that perhaps an average listener wouldn’t?

Well, it’s fair to say just about anyone feeling the genuine delivery from B.B. and his entire outfit could take note that something of value was unfolding. B.B. exuded some honest enjoyment while working through years of delivering his inimitable style and savviness.

Have you ever tried to play any of B.B.’s music?

For the recent 10 years, an annual holiday gathering in Texas, known as ‘The Jungle Show’, takes the stage alongside Jimmie Vaughan, Mike ‘The Drifter’ Flanigin and Chris ‘Whipper’ Layton, where we open the performances with our version of one of BB’s great numbers [from the ’60s] named The Jungle.

We’re doing our best to remain interpreters within the scope of the originator. It’s nothing short of a blast.

There’s a story that, as adult, you met B.B. properly when you were 22. Did he remember you from the session you sat in on as a child?

Oh, yeah! In Las Cruces, New Mexico. We met somewhat informally while sharing a dressing room prior to the show, which sparked some lively discussions surrounding guitars. The recollection of that day back in the ’50s from the ACA session in Texas came much later when we gathered to join the tribute recording as B.B. was celebrating turning 80!

That same story says that B.B. asked to play your guitar and commented on how heavy your strings were. Is that true?

Yes. At the time, using heavy-gauge guitar strings was thought necessary for getting a big tone. When B.B. asked to try a few licks on my guitar, he quickly smiled and asked, ‘Why you working so hard?’ He then laid it down to show off a new set of his super-light-gauge strings. It was at that very moment that everything turned around. As B.B. then said, ‘Light is all right!’ [laughs]

How important was that switch to lighter strings when it came to harnessing your tone?

Ironically, the switch to lighten the load, so to speak, was automatic. First came the set of nines, then eights. And now, thanks to Jim Dunlop, we’ve slithered down to sevens. They stretch, stay in tune and they don’t break. B.B., we thank you!

If B.B. were here now, what tone secret or recommendation do you think he’d make?

Prior to his departure, B.B. kindly took time to offer encouragement with enthusiasm toward keeping an eye on authenticity. In as much as one would suspect, B.B. left his mark through so many superb recordings and shared that specialness with many.

From your standpoint, how do you recreate BB’s tone?

Getting close to creating something of a B.B. tone is more about taking time to allow some soul searching and inspiration. T’ain’t easy, yet B.B. would be first to offer a word of appreciation to go ahead with it.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

You suspect BB would smile to see it, maybe break out that warm butterscotch laugh – then give a disbelieving shake of the head at all the fuss. As Joe Bonamassa gathers the great man’s acolytes for the all-star BB King’s Blues Summit 100, it calls to mind the Charles Darwin quote that the company a man keeps is the best measure of his worth.

By that metric alone, King is a giant. And yet, to thumb through the guitarist’s back pages is to be reminded of a towering figure in his own right: not just a player who changed the possibilities of his instrument, but an instrument of social change himself.

Immortality wasn’t on the cards when Riley B King took his first breaths on 16 September 1925.

Born some 20 miles from Indianola, Mississippi, the boy’s lowly status was deepened by his parents’ separation, and when his mother sought work on a farm in the hills of Kilmichael, seven-year-old Riley grew up fast, working corn and cotton fields, snatching at strands of education and the transcendence of the Elkhorn Baptist Church.

Riley’s introduction to the guitar, too, had something of the spiritual about it. Some 80 years later, King could still picture the day a local reverend came calling and left his guitar unattended. Caught red-handed by the preacher man, King recalled his expectation of a scolding and his surprise at being encouraged to fret his first notes instead.

As for repertoire, the field hollers were a starting point, as were the sounds of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson crackling from Riley’s Aunt Mima’s wind-up gramophone. No coincidence that his later style would sit squarely between them, with a third flavour from Bukka White – a cousin of his mother and a future star – who impressed the boy with his mesmerising slide touch.

Riley soon found himself seeking solace in music for intensely personal reasons, having lost his mother and grandmother in quick succession (while still scarred from the death of his two-year-old brother, reportedly from eating glass).

It fell to the orphaned 12 year old to survive alone in a cabin in the woods: a period when he withdrew from the world to silently process his grief. Mercifully, the farm owner had advanced the boy his wages, enabling Riley to buy his first guitar, a red Stella acoustic.

That instrument would be cruelly stolen, but when King joined another aunt and uncle in the Mississippi Delta, he saved for another six-string, put to good use upon joining The Famous St John’s Gospel Singers.

Soon, having secured a better-paid job as a tractor driver, Riley had the means to travel to Indianola on the weekends, soaking in the music that coursed through the city, while adding his own thumbprint as a busker.

From Farm To Stage

As an agricultural worker, Riley was ruled out of military service and by 1945 had become jaded by his life as a sharecropper. Yet it took a happy accident to get him moving. Returning from the field one day, he watched in horror as his tractor surged forward and snapped its exhaust against the barn’s doorframe. Panicking, Riley split for Memphis, the city whose fabled music boulevard, Beale Street, had appeared to him in dreams.

Hooking up with his cousin, Bukka White, 23-year-old Riley found work by day and filled his evenings with music. Already mesmerised by the electric sounds of Charlie Christian, now he picked up on Django Reinhardt and T-Bone Walker, while seeking an audience with the great harp-blower Sonny Boy Williamson II, whose radio spot made him a local kingmaker.

Riley got in front of Williamson, who recommended him for a regular gig at the 16th Street Grill in West Memphis. The weekly pay was $72 (which was a leap from the $22 he’d made on the tractor), but it came with a condition – Riley had to gain radio exposure and plug the eatery on air. The logical first stop was WDIA – programmed for African-Americans – and King couldn’t believe his luck to be offered a daily 15-minute spot.

It was around this time that Riley became BB, albeit by degrees. Each of the DJs had nicknames, and the new kid evolved from ‘Beale St Blues Boy’ to ‘Blues Boy’, then ‘Bee Bee’, and finally ‘BB’.

Just as vital to his identity, meanwhile, was the first guitar billed as ‘Lucille’ (a Gibson L-30 archtop, by all accounts) after a fracas at an Arkansas nightclub.

“Two guys started to fight and one knocked the other onto this big garbage can full of kerosene,” King once told Guitarist. “When I got outside, I found out these two guys was fighting about a lady in the nightclub. [Her] name was Lucille. But then I realised I’d left my guitar inside. So I went back in for it – and I named it ‘Lucille’ to remind me not to do a thing like that again. And I haven’t!”

About Time

Through his WDIA connections, King began his recording career in 1950, cutting a few sides with little success. The breakthrough came with 1951’s 3 O’Clock Blues, supposedly tracked at Memphis’s Black YMCA using portable recording equipment and blankets on the windows to deaden traffic noise.

It gave the 26 year old his first No 1 on the Billboard R&B chart in February 1952 – 10 further singles would hit the Top 20 by 1955 – and unlocked a higher orbit of venues that King travelled between in a tourbus he proudly nicknamed ‘Big Red’.

But as the decade unfolded, rock ’n’ roll began stealing his audience, and a disaster in 1958 almost put him back to square one, as Big Red was involved in a serious collision with a butane truck near Dallas. While the musicians survived, two truckers died in the fireball, and it transpired that King’s insurance was invalid, leaving the bandleader personally liable.

Deep in debt and robbed of the funds he’d earmarked for taxes, IRS agents began showing up at gigs to demand money – BB claimed he was then paying himself just $75 a week.

Nothing to do but work his way out of the hole. As the 60s got underway, King was relentless as a road warrior and businessman, switching to ABC Records in 1962 in the hope this bigger label could take him to the next level.

From King’s standpoint, there was nothing particularly special about the show of 21 November ’64 at the Regal Theatre in Chicago.

Uniquely, however, that concert was recorded and his 1965 release, Live At The Regal, would go on to rank among the best live albums of all time – a masterclass in one-note shiver and showmanship.

More significant for BB personally, however, was the February 1967 show at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium, promoted by Bill Graham. The suburban audience gave the guitarist a standing ovation before he’d played a note, reducing King to tears; white hippy kids appreciating the rhythm and blues of a black man was entirely new territory.

King’s exposure to this new demographic came courtesy of a fresh generation of electric blues stylists. Eric Clapton had re-energised the genre in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers; likewise Michael Bloomfield with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

That both of these hip young players, among others, tipped their hats did no harm for BB’s profile. Coupled with a new manager in Sidney Seidenberg – “the smartest career move I ever made” – the fruitless work and financial hardship of the late 50s and 60s were finally receding.

What A Thrill

The big pay-off came in 1970. A year earlier, King had hit the studio with producer Bill Szymczyk to record Completely Well. One track – The Thrill Is Gone, written in 1951 by Rick Darnell and Roy Hawkins – was a curveball, far from the standard I-IV-V structure. Szymczyk even added strings, marking a sonic departure for BB and giving the song true mainstream appeal.

The Thrill Is Gone duly achieved King’s highest-ever chart placing and won that year’s Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance, with the bluesman’s crossover confirmed by his appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, reaching an estimated audience of 20 million.

With so many seminal bluesmen dying unknown in penury, it’s heartening that the second half of King’s life – from his mid-40s to his death at 89 – was an extended lap of honour. In 1971, for the first time, he toured overseas and was amazed to find pockets of fandom as far-flung as London, Japan, Australia and Africa.

The 80s were heralded by King’s induction into the nascent Blues Foundation Blues Hall Of Fame, while Gibson honoured him with his own Lucille signature model (an ornate ES-355 without f-holes and the addition of a fine-tuning bridge).

In 1987, King accepted a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, while a year later he met a new generation thanks to When Love Comes To Town – the duet sung with Bono on U2’s Rattle And Hum. When the Irishman suggested they might bash through the song on acoustic guitars before recording, King politely demurred: “Gentlemen, I don’t do chords…”

The 90s, too, began in auspicious fashion, with the guitarist awarded a National Medal Of The Arts by President George HW Bush, before opening the first BB King Blues Club on his beloved Beale Street.

Having visited the White House a second time in 1995 to be honoured by President Bill Clinton as a Kennedy Center Honoree, two years later BB would even meet Pope John Paul II at the Vatican – and gift him a Lucille.

In truth, King’s late career was more about his shows and ceremonial role than breaking ground in the studio. Yet there were bright spots: 2000’s double-header with Eric Clapton, Riding With The King, earned double-platinum sales and a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues album (King’s second win in the category, following 1998’s Blues On The Bayou, among a lifetime haul of 15).

Few of the founding post-war bluesmen crossed over into the new millennium, but for a time, BB defied his advancing years. In 2004, he was presented with the prestigious Polar Music Prize – not to mention a cool one million crowns – by the King of Sweden.

Closer to home, the following year saw officials break ground in Indianola for the BB King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. Even 2006’s purported UK ‘farewell’ tour – with support from Gary Moore – proved nothing of the sort, with 2011’s Glastonbury Festival transported by his Pyramid Stage set.

“At times, his playing is staccato and stripped-back, punctuating songs with curlicues of melody,” wrote The Guardian. “At others it’s mellifluous and masterful, showcasing shimmering vibrato.”

But King was by then deep into his 80s, and so came a succession of ‘last times’. Four days after Glastonbury, King would play the Albert Hall and meet Guitarist for our final interview.

In 2012, he paid a last visit to the White House, performing Sweet Home Chicago with President Barack Obama on guest vocals. On 3 October 2014, he stepped offstage at Chicago’s House Of Blues to be diagnosed with dehydration and exhaustion, the eight remaining shows struck off.

King would never perform again, and died at the age of 89 in Las Vegas on 14 May 2015. The news was inevitable yet unthinkable, the sudden shattering of a tenet in all our lives as music lovers.

Writing in The Guardian, perhaps Bonamassa put it best: “The sun will rise and fall and BB King will play the blues. To say his loss is devastating to the blues community is an understatement. He defined the blues. He was the blues…”

• Joe Bonamassa on his friendship with the ultimate bluesman, B.B. King – and paying the ultimate tribute
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
  

B.B. King reflected on his life in guitar many times across the decades. Here, he paints a nuanced, surprisingly humble portrait of himself in quotes selected from milestone interviews with Guitarist magazine.

Walking the talk (Guitarist, December 2011) 

I’ve never been a real hot player, and a lot of kids are hot players. I’m slow because I walk slow, talk slow, sing slow – the whole works. It isn’t because I feel that way, that’s just the way I am.

Divine inspiration (Guitarist, December 2011) 

My mother’s brother was married to a sanctified preacher’s sister. And when I heard him play the guitar, that was the nicest thing ever. That’s about the first time I started paying attention.

Hallmark vibrato (Guitarist, December 2011) 

When the Hawaiian people would play, it was so mellow, so good to your ears. Every time I’d get a guitar, I’d always trill my hand and it became a habit. Guys would say, ‘How’d you do that?’ I’d say, ‘Like this!’

In the footsteps of T-Bone Walker (Guitarist, August 2009) 

The greatest thing for me was to hear T-Bone Walker, and the first time I ever heard him, he was playing Stormy Monday. He was a driving force in my learning to play and I would’ve married him!

He was playing one of those big-bodied Gibsons [an ES-5], and you could hear it cutting right above the band, so that was always my idea, too; putting the microphone on the amp just gave me the little boost I needed.

The trouble was every time I had a guitar in my hands, the notes that T-Bone and the others used just didn’t seem to be on the neck.

The hard life of a touring guitar (Guitarist, August 2009) 

I was just a sucker for any guitar I could get and manage to hold on to! I was from the country and we didn’t have money like people did in the towns; you could save and save but still rarely get enough money to buy a nice guitar.

I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis, a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup, which I used with a small Gibson amplifier. But sometimes they’d get busted up, people would steal ’em and one time I even had a car wreck when an 18-wheeler ran into the back of me. At least that time I had a chance to get a new guitar on insurance.

Finding amps that sing (Guitarist, August 2009)

I like to use tube amps and I’ve always been crazy about Fender Twins; as long as they’re in reasonable shape, they’ll give me what I want. I like to have the volume and treble up all the way and bass at about number 6, with just a small hint of reverb.

If I have the amp set up like that, I find I can change the sound to suit the hall if I need to, just by adjusting the controls on my guitar. I’ve always used those old Gibson Lab Series amps, too – you don’t see them around too much these days, so every time I see one for sale I just buy it!

Doing the work (Guitarist, August 2009) 

If I’m lucky maybe I’ll sit down with my guitar for half an hour a day [when out in the tourbus] – that’s all. But it always felt as though I’ve had to work harder at it than other people.

I’ve never really been able to play chords and that’s why I’ve always had my band play the rhythm while I play the lead – I started out that way and I guess I just got lazy. I wouldn’t want to sound just like T-Bone Walker or Barney Kessel, but it would be nice to feel sometimes that at least I was their equal.

No quitting (Guitarist, December 2011) 

It [the passage of time] made me know that I couldn’t play very well. I hear some people playing so good – I hear them and say to myself, ‘Oh God, I might as well quit.’ Then the other half of my mind says, ‘Well, how you gonna eat?’ [laughs]. So that’s one of the reasons I haven’t quit.

Feeling the way (Guitarist, August 2009) 

I wanted to play like Lonnie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson – even Jimmy Rogers did things I liked. I loved Django Reinhardt as well, but when T-Bone Walker came up with that single-string playing on the electric guitar, that did it – I just went crazy.

I never really wanted to play just like them; I was a rebel and just wanted to play what I felt. I’ve been criticised for it and even read recently that I played ‘watered-down blues’. Well, if they think that, they can write it – I really don’t mind. I just do what I do!”

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

I went to Indianola, Mississippi, in 1948 and B.B. King was in Greenville working at Ruby’s Place. He came over to introduce himself to me and we’ve been friends from that until he passed.

When he passed, they asked me to have a word to say on his behalf at the funeral. I was the last man they called up to speak about my relationship with B.B. and his life, and then someone come to me and said, ‘Listen, we’re going to take his body to Indianola. We’d like you to lead the hearse down to Indianola’.

The relationship I had with him through the years, we continued being friends for 69 years. I don’t think there’s nobody living today that knew him as long as I did.

If you saw him from 1950 until he passed, he’d maybe added a song or two to his show, but his show never changed. He didn’t try to follow disco or any of the trends that everybody was doing. That’s what he taught me.

I don’t try to change anything about what I’m doing. If you like what I’m doing, fine. If you don’t like what I’m doing, I’m good at what I do. Be good. That’s all that matters. That comes from B.B. King. He’s the first one who taught me to be myself.

• B.B. King's Blues Summit 100 is out now via KTBA Records.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Joe Bonamassa and his band had already cut the instrumental track of Watch Yourself, so I just brought my horn section into the studio and played it how I felt.

I mean, you can play B.B.’s licks, but it would be silly to mimic him, even if you could. So I didn’t play a Gibson semi-hollow, either, because what would that get me? Instead, I took my white Strat, and for my amp I played two of the new Fender Bassmans.

Watch Yourself [1968] is just one of B.B.’s many beautiful songs. I had all his ’60s albums as a teenager and he was a giant influence. The first one I bought was Easy Listening Blues [1962] and I basically learnt guitar from playing along to Live At The Regal [1965].

He was all over the guitar. I loved the way he would trill and vibrato the note – I’ve read interviews where he said he learnt that from Django Reinhardt. Later, I remember listening to The Thrill Is Gone when I was working as a garbage man in the city of Irving, Texas.

I was 13 when I saw B.B. for the first time, at the Central Forest Club in Texas, which was an old movie theatre. He was playing there all weekend. So I’m standing out front and the Sunday matinee show had already started, but I was too young to get in.

But then T-Bone Walker walked by with two little girls – his granddaughters, I suppose – and said, “Well, let me talk to ’em, son, see if we can get you in the side door.” So that was my first time seeing B.B. and he was absolutely fabulous that night.

I went on tour with him several times, and when we did the Austin City Limits tribute to my brother Stevie [in 1995], we had B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, Buddy Guy. And just to watch B.B. playing close up was amazing.

I’ll always remember how nice he was, too. He was a fabulous guitar player and a great singer, but he was never stuck up. He would always go the extra mile. He would always talk to you, ask you what was going on.

Does it feel strange that B.B. King has been gone for a decade now? Well, he’s not gone to me. I still listen to him, all the time. He was my hero, y’know?

• B.B. King's Blues Summit 100 is out now via KTBA Records
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

One of the standout tracks from my new album, B.B. King: Blues Summit 100, is a cover of the iconic tune When Love Comes to Town, which is a song King had recorded with U2 in 1988, an unlikely pairing that worked out phenomenally well and became very popular when it was released the following year.

Bono had written the song specifically with B.B. in mind, and they recorded it together at Sun Studios in Memphis. B.B. would subsequently perform the song live with U2 nearly 50 times.

There are many really cool guitar parts in this song, not only from B.B. but also from the Edge, who played a solo, which was delightfully surprising, as it is very unusual to hear him play in this type of blues context.

The Edge’s solo has his signature ethereal sound, so in approximating it, we plugged in a TC Electronic 2290, an AMS reverb – using anything we could find from that era at Sunset Sound in L.A. – and the results are sonically appropriate.

Using that sound, I played a solo in his style, along the lines of Figure 1. The solo is based on simple combinations of quarter and eighth notes, incorporating the open low and high E strings and the open B string, as well as a strummed E5 chord, with all notes allowed to ring into each other.

When it’s B.B.’s turn to solo, he gets right to classic B.B.-style phrasing, like Figure 2. Played in the “B.B. box,” the fret-hand is rooted in 5th position, starting with a big vibrato on an E root note and followed by succinct phrases that draw notes from both E major pentatonic (E, F#, G#, B, C#) and E minor pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D).

Figures 3 and 4 are based on the same approach, this time moving from the tonic chord, E, to the IV (four) chord, A, without changing positions. All of these improvised melodies are played in the same 5th-position box.

The original track offers a great lesson in the power of simplicity in the parts of both guitarists. The Edge played in his style and B.B. played in his, and the two work so well together.

When we set about to record our version of the song, we invited Slash, Miles Kennedy and Shemekia Copeland to contribute their talents, and they all did a fantastic job, putting their own stamp on this classic song.

There are many approaches Slash could have taken for his solo, and I thought it was cool that he did his own thing, utilizing his signature “rock” approach along the lines of Figure 5.

In this example, the first three bars are based on E minor pentatonic in 12th position, shifting in bar 4 up to 15th position then back to 12th position heading into bar 5. Moving into bar 6, the lines shift up to 17th position then back down to 5th position at the end of the bar.

The beauty of soloing over this song’s progression is you can stick with E-scale riffs the entire time, moving simply between the I and IV chords, as the tune never goes to the V (five) chord, B. I encourage you to make it your own, which is the approach Slash took quite effectively here.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Joe Bonamassa and I go way back, so when he told me about the B.B. tribute, I was like, ‘Yeah, sounds fun.’ I used to cover How Blue Can You Get in the ’70s, so I was glad they suggested that song because it would have been my first choice, for sure. I heard it first on Live In Cook County Jail [1971], then Live At The Regal [1965]. You can hear BB’s connection with the audience on that song – it always brought the house down.

My favourite line is: ‘I gave you seven children, and now you want to give them back.’ And, of course, with our version we had to update the price of the dinner. In the original, it’s $10, which at this point would barely cover a McDonald’s!

When they sent me the track, it was complete other than my guitar and vocal. I was at the Power Station in Connecticut, so I overdubbed my parts. To tip the hat, I played with a little more homage than I normally would, so I busted out the one-note vibrato. But I also threw a few curveball licks in there, just to liven up the party.

Again, I wanted to honour his sound and personality, so I played my 1961 ES-335, and the amp was a combination of a Gibson Falcon and my Alessandro.

I saw B.B. for the first time aged 19, and he gave me a guitar pick that I carried in my pants pocket for years until it eventually got lost. Then when I joined the Allman Brothers, we played with him in Texas. During the show, B.B. invited Gregg to sit in, and he went up to the mic and asked, ‘Anyone else want to join me?’

More than anything, I wanted to go, but I’d never met B.B. and thought he’d look at me like, ‘Who the hell are you?’ So I just froze. It was years later that I finally got another opportunity to play with B.B., and I have to say that was an extremely proud moment.

My other memory was in Memphis. The Allmans and B.B. were staying at the same hotel. There was a fire alarm and we had to evacuate. So I rode down in the elevator with B.B. in his pyjamas, and we were stood next to each other on the street, wondering if this hotel is going to burst into flames!

• B.B. King's Blues Summit 100 is out now via KTBA Records.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

When putting the tracks together for B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100 – my band’s two-disc, 32-track tribute to B.B. King in celebration of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 16, 2025 – we knew that the most essential track would be The Thrill Is Gone.

B.B. originally recorded this song back in 1969 for the Completely Well album, and it immediately became his signature tune and the most successful record of his career.

The Thrill Is Gone is so iconic, in fact, that no one wanted to cover it! I felt that I had two choices: one would have been to approach a young, budding blues artist with no fear about tackling the beast!

Luckily enough, we were able to get Chaka Khan for vocals and Eric Clapton for guitar. They are the crown jewels, two of music’s greatest icons, paying tribute to an icon.

When I listen to B.B.’s original version of The Thrill Is Gone, one of the most striking things is that every lick he plays sounds perfect, like it’s etched in stone. But I’m sure that he simply improvised everything you hear on the track right off the top of his head.

The eternal question is always, “How do I get into the tune?” For B.B., the answer is as simple as the riff shown Figure 1, which is along the lines of what’s heard on the record.

The phrase is based on B minor pentatonic (B, D, E, F#, A), with the 2nd, or 9th, C#, added here and there, as well as the major 7th, A#, when playing over the F#7 chord in bar 9. And the stabs on the high B note in bar 6 are elemental to B.B.’s signature style.

This figure is indicative of B.B.’s purely melodic and effortless approach, which is almost like jazz. His lines are so strong that they’re melodies unto themselves. Along with his distinctive touch, tone and phrasing, his solo lines are as integral to the tune as the chords and lyrics.

This is borne out by the fact that any time The Thrill Is Gone is covered, the guitar player will “quote” B.B. with a phrase like Figure 2. What you hear are long, sustained notes with heavy vibrato, followed by elegant melodic phrases.

When you listen to the great masters of this craft – B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Albert King – you realize that these phrases just flow naturally. There’s no thought involved. I very much doubt B.B. sat there and worked out a phrase like Figure 3.

On the recording, B.B. used a very clean tone, like a Fender Twin that’s barely turned up. Figure 4 is meant to be played in a subtle and delicate way. There’s no sustain coming from the amp, but there’s so much feel.

You can hear the tactility of his fingers, and you should aim for that feeling and mindset when playing a phrase like Figure 5. Notice the use of pull-offs, slides and quarter- and half-step bends, all of which make the lines that much more vocal-like.

The Thrill Is Gone is not just a beautiful piece of music, it’s a track that features some of B.B’s most iconic playing on that particular take. He never played the song the same way twice, but every version illustrates his brilliance as a true blues master.

• B.B. King's Blues Summit 100 is out now via KTBA Records.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

I played on Bad Case Of Love. You’re kind of spoiled for choice because I was in early, obviously, being part of the label. I knew of the project before they approached their wishlist of artists.

Thinking back to the first time I met B.B., it was actually one of the first gigs my parents took me to when I was really getting into blues. He played at the NEC in Birmingham, and he was handing out guitar picks at the end of the night.

My dad was like, “Go and get a guitar pick.” And I was quite shy, I was like, “No, no…” My dad said, “Look, out of all the people here: there aren’t many 13-year-old girls in the audience. Trust me, he wants you to have a guitar pick.”

So I legged it down to the stage as quickly as I could and, unfortunately, when I got down there he’d left the stage, but he happened to turn around. So I just waved at him and he came back onto the stage and knelt down in front of me.

I remember he had these massive hands and they’d got massive ruby rings on them. He said, “Howdy young lady, I’m B.B. King.” I said, “Mr King, my name is Joanne and I’m 13, and I think I’m going to be a blues guitarist. Do you have a guitar pick I could have?” But he’d run out of guitar picks. So he took his necklace off and put it on me.

Three years later, I was opening up for him. I did a few dates with him through Europe in 2001, I believe.

It’s a massive privilege to be able to say that, but that night, I kind of felt like that was a seal of approval in my little 13-year-old mind that I told B.B. King I was going to be a blues woman, and he gave me a necklace. So I thought I was the chosen one!

• B.B. King's Blues Summit 100 is out now via KTBA Records
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

The double-CD and three-LP release in honour of BB King’s 100th birthday, BB King’s Blues Summit 100, was a labour of love for Joe Bonamassa. To say that the album features a who’s who of blues guitarists young and old is really only the tip of a very large iceberg.

Indeed, when Joe announced the project to the blues guitar world, it expanded exponentially, such was the clamour it created.

Artists including Marcus King, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, Larkin Poe, Jimmie Vaughan, Warren Haynes, Dion, Aloe Blacc, Kirk Fletcher and not forgetting Eric Clapton were eager to lend their hands – and guitar playing – to a selection of songs that B.B. had made famous throughout his long career. And what a joyous celebration of one man’s contribution to music and popular culture it is.

Joe met B.B. King 36 years ago, but the meeting holds such significance, to him it seems like it was only yesterday.

“I met him at the Lilac Festival in Rochester, New York, May 24 1990,” he tells us. “My band was booked to open up for him. I was a kid and he took an interest in my career, or just my playing. This was all pre‑internet, so it wasn’t like he had watched my videos on YouTube or Instagram. Back then you had to discover things as they were happening. We just started a friendship.”

Did B.B. offer you advice on how to develop your playing style in those early days?

No, but you couldn’t help but watch him and learn. He was always very encouraging, like, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing and don’t change.’ I can’t think of another guitar player that with a single note is that identifiable, you know what I mean? Maybe Albert King, but Albert King really would require a two- or three-note phrase.

But B.B. King could just play one note, and it’s like you know who he is, and those are the players you can’t help but pay attention to and understand and learn from.

Did you continue to play with him often?

Technically, the last run I did with him was about 10 years before he died. That was the last time. That was the last tour. We did a couple of shows in Europe, at the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam, and the last time I saw him was right before he came off the road in 2014 at the Canyon Club in LA and he literally picked up our conversation from where we’d left off.

He was just like, ‘Are you still dating that girl?’ He knew everything. He was so hip, and then he came off the road maybe a few months later.

Have you got any favourite B.B. King anecdotes?

Well, he showed me how to drag songs from a computer into an iPod when he was 80 years old! I didn’t know how to do that and he’s like, ‘Here, son, this is how you do it.’ How sad is that? I was 28 or something and he was 80. But he was a consummate professional.

I remember one time in Charleston, West Virginia, there was a big snowstorm, and the governor of West Virginia called specifically to ask B.B. King to postpone the show and he wouldn’t do it. He goes, ‘I told them I’m going to be here in March and I’m here.’ They’re like, ‘But Mr. King, it’s unsafe.’ He said, ‘Well, I made it!’ So that was him, man.

Did BB’s work ethic of always being on the road influence you?

Yeah, he was always touring. I mean, he would do those summer runs and then go right back on the road in theatres and he was very much a road dog and he loved it a lot. I mean, he always said, ‘I want to die on the road, doing what I love,’ you know? But he didn’t know any other life. You’re talking about somebody who started working that much in the early ’50s and never stopped for anything.

Thinking about B.B.’s use of ‘Lucille’ Gibson ES-355s, were you inspired to include that model in your collection?

I have a couple of 355s. They tend to be stereo, but I actually have a couple of mono ones, which are great because you get an ebony fingerboard, mono, no Varitone – it’s like the coolest 335 you’ve ever played.

It was the late ’70s when the first Lucille came off the line. Some of them were red, and they were like 1978 to 1979, and he was the one that said, ‘I don’t want the f-hole, make it more of a solid thing.’ And that was one of Gibson’s longest-running signature models, other than the Les Paul, which is a signature model guitar.

Did B.B. like to play loud on stage?

When I first started opening for him, he was using a Twin Reverb and a lot of times we would supply the backline. He liked my 1970 or ’72 Twin Reverb. It had mismatched speakers in it, but it was a great Twin. He liked it because it was loud and punchy.

Then as the years went on, he ended up graduating to the Lab Series L5, which is basically like a solid-state 100-watt Twin. So he played loud. It wasn’t quiet on stage; he cranked.

He had a big sound. All of the Kings had big sounds. Albert had a big sound, Freddie had a big sound – and they played loud, which was great.

How did you go about assembling the players that you’ve got on the new tribute album?

It escalated. We had a wishlist and we originally cut 20 or 22 songs and we thought that would be enough. Then as it escalated and things got more involved we ended up having to cut another dozen. We had cut 34 and we’re using 32.

Some of the collaborations you’re like, ‘Why did you have Michael McDonald, Derek [Trucks] and Susan [Tedeschi], do the one song?’ Well, it’s because they all called that song. So you get these happy accidents, you know?

Was the process of matching artists to tracks fairly straightforward?

We had to do When Love Comes To Town. I mean, it’s one of B.B.’s biggest songs. But you’re like, ‘Well, who’s going to sing it?’ You’ve got to split the vocal. So I came up with this idea of asking Myles Kennedy to sing it, Slash to play guitar, and Shemekia Copeland to do the B.B. bits. And it came out great.

Once you start getting into these things, you get Chris Buck with Pat Monahan [of Train] and it was just like, ‘Oh, Chris, you want to play on the record? We got a spot for you on this song…’ Then the crown jewel was having Chaka Khan and Eric Clapton on The Thrill Is Gone. Paul Rogers wanted to sing Night Life, and he wanted a very specific version; he wanted to sing the Blues Is King version. No problem. Got you covered.

To be honest with you, a lot of times we had this list of songs – because you’ve got to do these songs, you can’t leave them out – and a lot of times I was just going to these artists, I’m like, ‘Hey, man, I’m sorry. I know it’s a big thing. What key do you want it in?’ And they’re like, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’

We had heard Marcus King sing Don’t Answer The Door before, so we knew he was game for that. And Keb’ Mo’ did I’ll Survive and he did a great job. So some of this stuff plugged in fast, and then some of the stuff we ended up waiting around and retooling, but it got done.

So basically it was your band laying down the tracks with the guests recording their parts in different studios?

Yeah, this thing would not have been possible if we had done it Quincy Jones We Are The World style. It’d be physically impossible. As it was, from start to finish, with artwork and everything, it took eight months, which is like warp speed.

We were tasked as a band to go in and just cut tracks. Sometimes we had to change keys. And we were doing it on the road. I mean, we recorded most of it in Los Angeles, some of it in Buffalo, New York, some of it in Atlanta, and I think one song in Nashville. We just had to be flexible.

What’s your favourite B.B. King track these days?

My favourite track has always been The Thrill Is Gone. I know it’s cliché, but, to me, it was the perfect blues song and it was a hit. And B.B. got a lot of shit when it came out because [producer] Bill Szymczyk put strings on it and they thought it was too sophisticated and that they had sold out. He was so ahead of his time. You know, strings and blues? That was revolutionary.

With The Thrill Is Gone having been taken by Clapton, how did you end up contributing Playin’ With My Friends to the album?

I always said I’m going to take what’s left over because this is a guest-star record. There are probably five songs that I sang and did bits on, but finally I just said to [co-producer] Josh [Smith], ‘I’m sick and tired of this shit. Let me do mine right at the end when there’s a leftover. I feel like I’m cutting the whole album.’

Which guitar did you use for your contribution?

It’s all 335. They do that thing, you know? But B.B. had a lot of different sounds throughout his career because we covered stuff from the ’50s all the way through to his modern work. I mean, you could tell when he was using the ES-5 in the ’50s. Even some of the songs, you go, ‘Man, I think that’s the Esquire,’ because it’s really Fender-y.

By ’64, his sound was more like what you would have expected it to sound like – usually a 335 or some sort of archtop. But we didn’t want to do sound-alikes, either. We wanted to make them our own.

• BB King's Blues Summit 100 is out now via KTBA Records.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

After it was teased at NAMM 2026, Gary Clark Jr.’s new signature guitar is here – and the Grammy-winning artist’s Gibson ES-355 pays homage to the late, great, B.B. King.

The run is limited to just 100 Gibson Custom guitars, each handcrafted at the company's Nashville, Tennessee workshop. It is a recreation of the Custom Shop model the bluesman had crafted for him six years ago, which has since become his go-to electric.

The Eric Clapton-approved guitarist and Guitar Center RockWalk honoree is one of modern blues and rock's most influential players, with his new ES-355 following a signature Epiphone Casino and a triple P-90-loaded SG.

The specs of the OG are replicated here. There is a three‑ply maple/poplar/maple body topped with figured maple, a mahogany neck with a ‘50s rounded C-shape, and a bound ebony fretboard with 22 Historic medium jumbo frets. And, of course, there are mother-of-pearl block inlays.

Grover Rotomatic tuners with kidney buttons and the split diamond headstock inlay ensure the model has vintage Custom Shop charm. At the other end, there's an ABR-1 Historic No-Wire bridge and Bigsby B7 tailpiece, so Clark Jr. can “go crazy if I want to.”

At its heart are two unpotted Custombuckers featuring Alnico 3 magnets, promising the warm and articulate tones Clark Jr. is known for – but, unfortunately, they won’t make you play like him.

They’re accompanied by CTS audio taper pots, paper‑in‑oil capacitors, a Switchcraft three‑way toggle, and a mono Varitone circuit topped with a black chicken‑head knob.

And how about that VOS Cobra Burst finish? It’s nuanced to the nines, and it’s absolutely jaw-dropping.

“When I was a child, I had a poster on my wall of B.B. King playing Lucille,” the guitarist recalls. “I always wanted one of those guitars. I just wanted to be a part of that world. Here we are years later and I'm holding this ES-355, it's a dream come true.

“I can explore all the sounds that inspired me as a kid, and today, it's one of the most versatile instruments. And it's gorgeous!”

The Gibson Custom Gary Clark Jr. ES‑355 is available now for $7,999. It ships with a premium hardcase emblazoned with the guitarist’s distinctive logo.

See Gibson for more.

If you aren’t quick enough to grab one, don’t fear. An Epiphone edition is set to follow in due course.

Warren Haynes has looked back on his earliest exchanges with B.B. King – revealing that he passed up the first opportunity he got to play with the legendary bluesman.

With the release of Joe Bonamassa’s Blues Summit 100 B.B. King tribute album – and Guitarist magazine celebrating what would be the King’s 100th birthday – players from all corners of the guitar world are paying tribute to the blues great’s life and legacy.

And, in the new issue of Guitarist, Haynes – one of the many guest guitarists on Bonamassa’s star-studded tribute – explains how he walked away from his first B.B. King gig with the ultimate memento.

“I saw B.B. for the first time aged 19,” Haynes recalls. “He gave me a guitar pick that I carried in my pants pocket for years until it eventually got lost.”

Haynes would cross paths with King again years later as a member of the Allman Brothers, who ended up sharing the stage with B.B. in Texas. However, though King opened the stage up and invited players to join him, Haynes just couldn’t bring himself to trade licks with his hero. Fear took hold.

“When I joined the Allman Brothers, we played with him in Texas,” Haynes continues.

“During the show, B.B. invited Gregg to sit in, and he went up to the mic and asked, ‘Anyone else want to join me?’ More than anything, I wanted to go, but I’d never [properly] met B.B. and thought he’d look at me like, ‘Who the hell are you?’ So I just froze.”

Fortunately, Haynes wasn’t left to regret missing the chance to play with King for the rest of his life. Later on in his career, the opportunity came back around – and he seized it.

“It was years later that I finally got another opportunity to play with BB,” he says. “And I have to say that was an extremely proud moment.”

Elsewhere in the new issue of Guitarist, Billy Gibbons reveals the game-changing advice that B.B. King gave him about guitar strings – and it changed his approach to playing forever.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up a copy of Guitarist issue 534.

B.B. King is the undisputed King of the Blues but his influence extends far and wide, beyond blues guitar, through generations.

And, if you catch Machine Gun Kelly’s (mgk) blockbuster show, you’ll see his influence there, too – because for touring guitarist Justin Lyons, aka “GuitarSlayer,” B.B. King was the original source, the one who lit the spark.

Speaking to Premier Guitar, Lyons reveals that he discovered B.B. King before he was even in first grade, and this is why you’ll find an Epiphone Lucille making its debut in his touring lineup.

“This is my baby, right here. For those [who don’t know me], I’m Justin Lyons, and I started playing at age five, and my first cassette tape that my mom ever gave me was The Thrill Is Gone by B.B. King,” he says.

Lyons didn’t have a guitar yet. He didn’t need one to play along.

“I was standing in front of that mirror with my broom,” he says. “And I would just go at it, man. [Laughs] And my mom was like, ‘Yo, let me get this kid a real guitar.’”

His mom stepped up, got him a guitar, and now he’s playing arenas and stadiums, and playing Ozzy Osbourne covers during pre-Grammy Gala shows, with a resumé that includes collabs with Lil Wayne, Chrisette Michele, Mindless Behavior, Tank, Tamela Mann, Vivian Green and Bobby Brown.

We might ordinarily associate him with PRS Guitars – the solidbody electric guitar is his bread and butter. But, like B.B. King, Lyons has lost his heart to Lucille. He admits it's hard to pick it up and not think about the King of the Blues. What Lyons wants to do is honor that, but in his own special way.

“It’s just kind of nostalgia for me,” he says. “I think about B.B. King – what would B.B. King do? Where it’s this punk rock, but even just a thrill or something like that for a particular song. But, yeah, this is one of my favorite pieces, man.”

There have been many Lucilles over the years – Gibson replicas, Epiphone guitars, too – but none quite like Lyons’. His Epiphone has a custom graphic he painted himself.

“I’ve had this guitar maybe three years now, and I was like, ‘Yo, let me paint something to make it like a signature [model],” he says. “I create. I’m a painter as well. So I just painted a little signature piece on top of it, and it sings to me every time.”

In other B.B. King news, today (February 6) Joe Bonamassa releases his epic, all-star tribute to the King of the Blues, B.B. King's Blues Summit 100, featuring guest spots from Marcus King, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Slash, Keb' Mo', Eric Gales and more.

You can order B.B. King's Blues Summit 100 via KTBA now.

Billy Gibbons may be one of the coolest cats ever to sling a Gibson Les Paul, but it took B.B. King playing his guitar to spark a string-gauge shake-up that changed the way he played forever.

With the recent release of Joe Bonamassa’s new tribute album to the King, Blues Summit 100, the late blues legend is back in the limelight. The record’s release coincided with what would have been King's 100th birthday, and, speaking in the new issue of Guitarist, ZZ Top maestro Gibbons reflects on his earliest memories of him. It proved to be life-changing.

They had met in the 1950s in Las Cruces, New Mexico, igniting “some lively discussions surrounding guitars”, including one line from King that left Gibbons re-assessing his belief about guitar tone.

“At the time, using heavy- gauge guitar strings was thought necessary for getting a big tone,” Gibbons quips. “When B.B. asked to try a few licks on my guitar, he quickly smiled and asked, ‘Why you working so hard?’ He then laid it down to show off a new set of his super-light-gauge strings.

“It was at that very moment that everything turned around. As BB then said, ‘Light is all right!’”

Gibbons practically restrung his guitar there and then, and the change was instant. His lighter string gauge, coupled with his decision to ditch guitar picks for pesos – “the serrated edge of the coin produces a delightful scratchiness,” he once said – transformed him into the player we know and love today. A guitar lesson from Jimi Hendrix didn’t hurt, either.

“Ironically, the switch to lighten the load, so to speak, was automatic,” he develops. “First came the set of nines, then eights. And now, thanks to Jim Dunlop, we've slithered down to sevens. They stretch, stay in tune, and they don't break. B.B., we thank you!”

The B.B. King tributes are set to continue following the announcement that he’s the latest musician to be the subject of a big-screen biopic. That follows recent films on Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, with further films on the Beatles and Sister Rosetta Tharpe also on the way.

The new issue of Guitarist is out now. Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

Jimmie Vaughan has looked back on the time T-Bone Walker miraculously came to his rescue when he was trying to get into his first-ever B.B King gig.

Sneaking into gigs is a rite of passage for countless aspiring musicians – but to experience an evening in the company the King, a young Vaughan needed the help of another blues legend.

Like his brother, Stevie Ray, Vaughan is a prolific bluesman in his own right, having spent much of his life rubbing shoulders with blues guitar legends and learning plenty of tricks along the way. He’s also benefited from those friendships in other ways, too.

“I was 13 when I saw B.B. [King] for the first time, at the Central Forest Club in Texas, which was an old movie theatre,” Vaughan says in the new issue of Guitarist. “He was playing there all weekend. So I'm standing out front, and the Sunday matinee show had already started, but I was too young to get in.

“Then T-Bone Walker walked by with two little girls – his granddaughters, I suppose – and said, ‘Well, let me talk to 'em, son, see if we can get you in the side door.’”

Walker’s influence was enough to get him in, and Vaughan was able to witness a legendary guitarist he would later call a friend.

“He was absolutely fabulous that night,” Vaughan remembers. “I went on tour with him several times, and when we did the Austin City Limits tribute to my brother Stevie [in 1995], we had BB King, Eric Clapton, Robert Cray Buddy Guy.

“Just to watch B.B. playing close up was amazing. He was a fabulous guitar player and a great singer, but he was never stuck-up. He would always go the extra mile. He would always talk to you, ask you what was going on.”

King passed away at the ripe old age of 89 in 2015. He left behind an expansive back catalogue of 40+ studio records and a legacy as a man who always supported the next generation. Just ask Joe Bonamassa, who was 13 when he first opened for him.

“Does it feel strange that BB King has been gone for a decade now?” Vaughan asks. “Well, he's not gone to me. I still listen to him, all the time. He was my hero, y'know?”

The new issue of Guitarist is out now. Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

In related news, Jimmie Vaughan recently discussed longevity, Strats, and recording the Porky’s Revenge soundtrack with a Beatle in a new Guitar World interview.

B.B. King, meanwhile, is to have his legendary life, legacy, and his main guitar, Lucille, chronicled in a forthcoming biopic. It's entitled Lucille, and its got some key figures involved.

Today, I’d like to talk about the legacy of the legendary B.B. King, as 2025 marked what would have been his 100th birthday. I met B.B. in 1990 when I was 13 years old, and we became lifelong friends. He was the nicest and most generous person I’ve ever known.

I recently recorded a tribute album in B.B.’s honor, Blues Summit 100. Sadly, he passed at the age of 89 on May 14, 2015, but he left behind a trove of the most essential and influential blues recordings of all time. Everything that I and most other blues and blues-rock influenced guitarists play, owes a tip to the hat to B.B.

The title of my tribute album references the guitarist’s 1993 release Blues Summit, which features duets with Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins, and others. Following in that tradition, Blues Summit 100 includes appearances by Buddy Guy, Slash, Marcus King, Jimmie Vaughan, Kirk Fletcher, and a variety of other guests.

When you talk about legendary guitarists and their indelible marks, there are some who can be identified upon hearing them play a few notes. With B.B., all it takes is one note! That’s it! Just one stinging vibrato and you know it can only be him.

B.B.’s soloing style was built on killer melodic phrases, like the one demonstrated in Figure 1.

Played in the key of B and based on a combination of B major pentatonic (B, C#, D#, F#, G#) and B minor pentatonic (B, D, E, F#, A), this lick is played in 12th position, in what’s often referred to as the “B.B. box.” All of the notes fall within that four-fret span, with the 1st finger anchored at the B string’s 12th fret. In bar 1, notice the essential whole-step bend of F# up to G# on beat 2.

In bar 2, I jump up to accent a high B note followed by a slide down to 7th position and a quick descending lick based on B minor pentatonic, phrased in B.B.’s style.

In Figure 2, I again begin in the same box but then shift down to 7th position for faster phrases based on B minor pentatonic, ending with a nod to B major pentatonic with the inclusion of the 6th, G#.

King was faster than he’s usually given credit for, as he would blaze through licks like these in just about every tune.

He also had some jazz influences, most notably Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, which he’d reference with licks like that shown in Figure 3, which begins in the manner of a horn line.

To telegraph a key change, B.B. would suddenly play a lick in, say, Bb, and when the band fell in behind him, he’d play expressive lines starting with a chordal stab, as in Figure 4.

B.B. had such an original catalog of licks, and there are many phrases I’ve learned from him that pop into my playing. Figures 5 and 6 are prime examples.

For me, as a blues player, it always starts and ends with B.B. King. Among my favorite albums are Indianola Mississippi Seeds, with Changing Things, Completely Well, with The Thrill Is Gone, and, of course, the burning Live at the Regal.

B.B. was so original and so powerful a player; his influence can be heard everywhere. He could plug into anything and would always sound like himself. Happy 100th birthday to B.B. King!

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

The first and only authorized biopic of blues guitar legend B.B. King is in the works, and it's named after the legendary Gibson ES-355 with which he made guitar history.

King is the latest in a long line of music legends to be honored with biopics, with the likes of Queen, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and the Beatles all subject to the silver screen treatment.

The news was broken exclusively by Deadline, and production is being handled by Canton Entertainment, in partnership with Grammy-winning producer Vassal Benford and The B.B. King Music Company & Estate.

Entitled Lucille, it is set to be the first and only authorized film chronicling everything that made King a legend.

Benford, who is the Chairman of The B.B. King Music Company & Estate, will be co-producing the film on behalf of the King’s estate. The film will chart his rise from extreme poverty to electric guitar stardom, and will depict his most famed collaborations with the likes of Eric Clapton, U2, The Rolling Stones, Richie Sambora, and Carlos Santana.

It will also showcase his role in bringing his blues from the cotton fields of Mississippi to the global stage, his eternal partnership with his famed Gibson ES-355, Lucille, and the near-death experience that gave the guitar its name.

“I’ve had the privilege of working on transformative, music-driven films throughout my career – from New Jack City to Purple Rain and Kiss,” says producer Mark Canton. “But there is no greater story of triumph and aspiration than that of B.B. King. I’m humbled to help bring it to life.”

“‘Lucille is more than a biopic – it’s a tribute to every kid who ever found hope in music,” adds the film’s other producer, Dorothy Canton.

For Benford, this is a doubly personal project.

“I promised Mr. King in 2014 that we would tell his truth with the same perfection he demanded every time he held Lucille,” he reveals. “With Dorothy, Mark, Raphael [Jackson Jr., writer], and Damione [Macedon, writer], that promise is now becoming a major motion picture of the highest caliber.”

The announcement follows on from Joe Bonamassa’s forthcoming and impressively star-studded tribute album to the King, which saw Eric Clapton get involved after another guest demanded his presence.

“You only get one shot to do this correctly,” Bonamassa says of the album, due for release early next year. “And I think we nailed it.”

Joe Bonamassa's mammoth tribute project to B.B. King was announced in September, with the unveiling of a star-studded list of collaborators.

However, Bonamassa has managed to squeeze two more music legends into the credits list, as he's now set to team up with Eric Clapton and Chaka Khan on King's timeless classic, The Thrill Is Gone.

The highly anticipated collaboration between the two blues guitar greats will arrive alongside the full album, B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100, on February 6.

It's set to be a momentous link-up, both for fans and for Bonamassa himself. After all, in one of his Guitar World columns last year, JoBo named Clapton as his favorite singer/songwriter and guitar player of all time.

In a separate piece posted to his own website, Bonamassa said of Clapton's influence, "I find that the higher you go up the ladder sometimes, the more humble and nice people are.

"That's truly the case of Eric Clapton; he's my hero and the reason I play the way I play, just basically one of those guys who plus the guitar straight into an amp and it sounds like him."

The two had previously traded licks on Bobby Bland's Texas shuffle Further On Up The Road at Bonamassa’s career-shifting Royal Albert Hall performance in 2009 – immortalized on the Live From The Royal Albert Hall album.

In the meantime, fans can take a deep dive into more King classic covers with the recently released B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100, Vol. III.

This volume sees Bonamassa link up with Buddy Guy on Sweet Little Angel, Larkin Poe on Don’t You Want A Man Like Me, Trombone Shorty and Eric Gales on Heartbreaker, Jimmie Vaughan on Watch Yourself, and Larry McCray on When It All Comes Down (I’ll Still Be Around).

Produced by Bonamassa and Josh Smith, B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100 continues to unfurl in monthly installments up until its February release date, when the full 32-track album will officially be released.

“When B.B. was alive and active, he was the blues – he was the sun which all planets rotated around,” says Bonamassa. “You only get one shot to do this correctly. And I think we nailed it.”

As for what we can expect from the Bonamassa–Clapton–Khan collaboration, the Nerdville owner remains tight-lipped.

Dino Muradian has lived a movie-script life. It’s the tale of a hard-working outlaw who accidentally became a guitar pyrographer to the stars – and getting there was quite the journey.

As he grew up in Romania, the art of burning images into unfinished woods was just a hobby. But when he escaped from the Communist state six years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, that hobby became his entire life.

“In August of 1983, I defected from Romania,” says Muradian, 73. “I was a commercial pilot, so I left on a Russian cropduster. After three and a half hours’ flight under the radar, I landed on an Austrian Autobahn.”

He sought refuge in Atlanta, Georgia, later moving to Washington, then Honolulu. “The Romanian authorities gave me a 25-year sentence for high treason, and asked for my extradition,” he laughs. “But everything stopped there.”

Stateside, he sold two art pieces “for serious money,” one of which earned him a feature in Fine Woodworking Magazine. Then, as he read a guitar magazine, his life changed forever. He spotted an advert from spare-parts manufacturer Warmoth displaying two raw guitar bodies, and that was his eureka moment.

He grabbed some samples of his art, went to the factory and met the two Warmoth brothers. “They pointed to a shelf with old issues of Fine Woodworking Magazine on it. Paul said, ‘Dino, I don't remember anything in those magazines – but I remember your artwork.’

“I said, ‘Give me a scrap guitar you don’t need; let me do something with it. They gave me a nice Telecaster, and in a few days I covered it in flowers. I went took it back to the factory and they couldn’t speak for five minutes. Ken called the Fender Custom Shop and said, ‘I’m sending you something on the first UPS. You need to see this.’”

Fender was impressed, but didn’t immediately bite the bullet. But ESP CEO Matt Masciandaro did – he ordered recreations of Frederic Remington's Native American paintings for a run of guitars. Then one of metal guitar’s biggest names came calling.

“In the spring of ’96, Matt asked me to pyrograph James Hetfield’s Explorer. I wasn’t sure who James was, but I said yes. Matt put me in contact with Zach Harmon, his guitar tech. James wanted ‘Something scary,’ so we came up with this elk skull idea – although it’s actually a stag.

“That was the weirdest guitar I’d ever done at the time; the Explorer has that weird shape and getting the horns to fit was really difficult. Horns don’t look like that in the wild!”

The guitar, which became a fan favorite, was donated to the ESP Museum in Tokyo, Japan, in 2019. But that was just the start of Muradian’s Metallica adventure. “The first time I met James was in Seattle in ’96, backstage,” he says.

“He made me feel so important, like he was talking to Michelangelo or something! He said, ‘Dino, this guitar sounds shitty, but I love it!’ ESP say he was always too picky about the sounds of his guitars, but that’s his art.

“That was my first heavy metal concert. I watched from the side of the stage and my whole body was vibrating. The guitar wasn't a big deal for me, but seeing him in those lights, playing it on stage, and seeing all those crazy people chanting and singing along was such an experience.

“He played a lot of songs with it, even though he said it sounded shitty. I was honoured to see the fruit of my work being appreciated like that.”

Muradian has worked on a series of Hetfield axes since then, including the Unforgiven Variax depicting scenes from the song’s video, a Cthulu design on his Snakebyte signature guitar, and a Martin D-28 that Hetfield played during December's All Within My Hands charity concert.

“The Unforgiven guitar was difficult,” Muradian says. “James had the idea to have lyrics around the sides of the guitar – black heart scarring darker still – but the neck was still attached. I have to turn the guitar a million times when I work. And because it’s black and the letters have to stay white, I had to burn around the letters; it took a long time.”

He continues: “The Martin was old and very expensive. He wanted an exact replica of Elvis’ sculpted leather guitar. He wanted to strip it for me to pyrograph. But you never know what’s underneath the paint – if it’s a dark wood, my art doesn’t show so well. So they got a newer one to work with.

“I finished the piece and sent it to a luthier in San Francisco to rebuild it. Then I then realized I’d missed a little arm from the letter ‘E.’ The show was so close so I had to jump on a flight from Honolulu. The mistake was corrected in about three minutes and James never knew!”

Naturally, it was only a matter of time until Hetfield’s gear-hoarding bandmate Kirk Hammett wanted a slice of the action. So one of his ESP Eclipses was pyrographed from top to bottom, on a background of the manuscript of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven – Hammett’s favorite poem.

“The second guitar I did for Kirk was in 2023; the 15th of a run of 15 Eclipses made to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Nosferatu film. He loved that. Nobody knows this, but one of the craters on the Moon on that guitar is in the shape of Romania!”

Muradian pyrographed B.B. King’s 17th Lucille for his 70th birthday – and his work for the Fender and ESP Custom Shops continues. Asked who his dream client would be, he doesn’t skip a beat in answering: “Taylor Swift.” Why? He thinks she’d benefit from the surprising tonal magic of his work.

“I’ve worked with violins, mandolins, cellos, you name it,” he says. “The owners all tell me that afterwards, ‘They sound amazing’ – especially if the whole instrument has been covered. The burning process changes something in the wood. It changes its structure, and it makes the instrument sound more powerful.”

So, Taylor, if you’re reading this, give Muradian a call. Maybe it could be a wedding present?

• See more of Muradian’s work on Instagram.

On what would have been B.B. King's 100th birthday, Joe Bonamassa has announced he’ll be joining forces with an astonishing cast of guitar heroes to celebrate the blues great's legacy via the upcoming tribute album, B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100.

The project has just launched with the release of its first five tracks out of a total of 32. The rest will be released in monthly installments through February 2026. Buddy Guy, Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, George Benson, Keb' Mo', Slash, Shemekia Copeland, Marcus King, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Larkin Poe, Warren Haynes, and many more are set to feature.

Speaking about why this collaborative effort is important for blues history, Bonamassa says, “Very few people in music define the genre in which they flourish, and B.B. King is one of them. When B.B. was alive and active, he was the blues – he was the sun which all planets rotated around. Only a few artists are the true north guiding the genre in which they participated, but he was that shining star.”

Bonamassa first opened for B.B. King at the age of 12, and therefore credits the blues titan for jump-starting his career and shaping his approach to both his life and career.

“He mentored me,” he says matter-of-factly. “But I wasn't the only one. All the people in his orbit have the same story about how kind B.B. was, and how he embraced the younger generation.”

For the other artists involved, the project goes beyond simply being a collaborative music project, but a reflection of King's immense legacy. Bobby Rush, who first met King in 1948, calls him “the man I looked up to all my life,” while Kenny Wayne Shepherd talks about receiving life advice from him on his 16th birthday.

The album title itself is a nod to King's Grammy-winning 1993 album Blues Summit, which, for Bonamassa, continues to solidify one of the blues greats' mission statements: “B.B.'s only wish was, ‘Do what you can to keep the blues alive.' Well, hopefully this album gives a B12 shot to his legacy – and to the legacy of the blues.”

For more information, visit Joe Bonamassa's official website.

In more recent news, fellow blues veteran Buddy Guy reveals that his cameo in the Michael B. Jordan movie Sinners was one of his many attempts to keep the blues alive.

There are varying degrees of guitar hero, but Carlos Santana is a name you’d expect to find near the top of any list. Like Jimi Hendrix, Brian May or Slash, Santana has transcended guitar music and permeated his way into popular culture, immortalizing his name into legend on every corner of the globe.

Of course, he’s a tremendous player, but it goes way beyond that; he’s a highly prolific composer and collaborator, the type of musician who can thrive in just about any musical environment, drawing from an impressively wide pool of influences to make his guitar speak to any kind of audience or listener.

His latest album, Sentient, serves as yet another reminder of these universal talents. It consists of 11 tracks, three of which were unreleased until now, and the rest reimagining some of his most famous partnerships over a storied career, from a moving live version of Michael Jackson’s Stranger in Moscow to classic cuts alongside Miles Davis and Smokey Robinson.

It’s an impressive body of work that captures the breadth of his sound and imagination while taking the listener on an unforgettable journey that defies all notions of boundary or genre. And, as the chart-topping veteran explains to GW, it’s mainly because his approach to music is a profoundly holistic one.

You’re one of the most prominent faces for PRS, but you’ve played all kinds of guitars throughout the years.

“Guitars are like crayons to me. Life is the canvas, and guitars are the colors you use to express your soul, your spirit, your heart, your passion and emotions. Those are the ingredients to create beauty, and guitars are the tools.”

How many guitars do you own these days?

“I don’t know, but probably not more than 100 and not fewer than 75. I guess the Fender Strats and Gibson Les Pauls would be the oldest models in my collection. I’ve got Strats from 1954; some of my Les Pauls go all the way back to 1959.”

You even had a Yamaha signature model in the ’80s.

“That’s right. I had a good time with Yamaha. I learned from each one of the guitar companies. They all have their own sound, texture and feel. But I always go back to my PRS models.

“Paul Reed Smith has mastered creating an instrument that behaves. No matter what the weather is like, it will stay in tune and always give you that great tone. I’m very grateful to Paul. He came up with his own vision to create a different tone and feel.

“I’m grateful he did that because his designs suited my personality when it came to self-expression. We’ve had a relationship since the late ’70s. He convinced me to come on board. Back then, there were only three companies I knew of – Gibson, Fender and Gretsch. There were others, but those three were the main ones.”

The PRS signature guitar you call “Salmon” is the guitar you’re most associated with lately. What makes it so special?

“I also think of it as my Supernatural guitar, because that’s what I used for 99 percent of that album [1999's Supernatural]. As for what’s special about it, I think it’s the most fluid. It’s the easiest instrument for me to materialize my inner-vision, thoughts and emotions. There’s not much struggle translating myself onto that guitar. But sometimes that struggle is nice, you know?

“Some people struggle with playing Stratocasters. It’s not easy to play a Strat and get really nice tones without pedals, because some people use pedals for extra sustain. But when you play loud enough like Jimi Hendrix going straight into Marshall stacks, they can become a whole other canvas. That’s why players like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Buddy Guy stuck with Stratocasters.”

PRS has continued to evolve through the years with models like the Silver Sky. Have you ever tried one?

“A bit here and there. I thought they were pretty close to the original design it had been clearly inspired by.”

The company’s SE models are also pretty well known for being some of the best guitars you can find for that kind of money.

“That’s right! From guitars to food or whatever, there are two words that are important for any business – impeccable integrity. When people put love and attention into what they make, it stands out.

“When my guitars arrive from Paul Reed Smith, they are always perfectly in tune. I’m not making it up! They come to me set up perfectly because somebody at the factory is doing that final check. A lot of companies don’t do that.”

You play PRS single-cut models, too. What kind of situations call for that over a double-cut?

“It’s like wine. You’ve got choices like burgundy, merlot and cabernet sauvignon. The singlecut is more like a merlot, it’s a more robust sound. When you play a double-cut, the sound changes dramatically and you get more treble. So in situations where I want more of a rounder sound, I will go for the single-cut. Both have their uses for different sounds and songs.”

On your new retrospective album, you turned your guitar into a voice for an instrumental version of Michael Jackson’s Stranger in Moscow. Not many players can make their instruments talk like that.

“There are components to articulating. It’s a bit like how a chef thinks about ingredients, from flavors to nutrients. To cook a delicious meal, you need more than salt and pepper. Nothing is closer to the heart than the voice. To make a guitar speak to people, it’s more than just volume and control.

“You need to put your soul into each note; when you do that, it changes the sound. There are a lot of people who play music that’s more mental, which has a different type of feel. It’s okay for certain things, but I prefer the sound of someone playing from their heart because of players like Wes Montgomery and Otis Rush. They made you feel what you hear.”

Which singers helped you most with your phrasing?

“If I sang, I’d want to sound like Marvin Gaye. If I were female, I’d want to sound like Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston or Billie Holiday. That’s what I’m thinking of when I play guitar – how to articulate.

“I’ve spent a lot of time taking my fingers for a walk with Smokey Robinson, so when I play my guitar, I become the voice through my fingers on the fretboard. It’s the same way I approached Stranger in Moscow. I had to morph myself and get into a character, almost like an actor.

“When you see Robert De Niro on a talk show and he’s not in character, sometimes he can be a little boring. But when he turns into the guy from Heat, Taxi Driver or The Godfather, he’s incredible. It’s a frame of mind. When I’m playing Stranger in Moscow, you’re hearing a different Carlos, because I’m thinking of Michael Jackson and phrasing everything differently – even if it’s still got my own fingerprint.”

On a technical level, what were you doing to sound like the original vocal?

“I chose to play more relaxed and behind the beat, choosing my notes carefully. It’s like putting your fingers in water and sprinkling someone’s face with water, or if you take a spoon to grapefruit and it squirts.

“Those are the good notes. A lot of people don’t know how to squirt their best notes! I learned this stuff from Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Albert King and Freddie King. If you don’t know how to squirt, everything is contained, and it can get boring after a while.

“I like being squirted in the face by music because it makes me feel alive. The goal of any guitar player, whatever the style may be – from funk and flamenco to heavy metal – is to make the listener feel alive. A good guitar solo should sound like an orgasm. I can hear it in Eddie Van Halen’s playing, and the same goes for Jimi Hendrix. I live for the juicy notes.”

There’s almost a Jeff Beck approach to your improvisation on that track. You knew each other and famously played together on The Nagano Sessions [with Steve Lukather] in 1986. What do you remember most about Jeff?

“Jeff Beck took guitar way beyond. His approach was like letting the hamster out of the cage. I was a big fan of Jeff from the second I heard him play. What I loved most was his imagination and passion. He was a very untraditional player, even though he had learned the traditional approach to blues to start with.

“I remember hearing Truth [Beck's first solo album from 1968] a long time ago and loving it, but I think the first song I heard by him was Over Under Sideways Down by the Yardbirds. He had this fuzz sound that was very special. You could also tell he’d been listening to people like Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan.

“He was a multi-dimensional player in that sense, the opposite of a one-trick pony. He learned from Roy Buchanan and Buddy Guy – I mean, we all took a lot from Buddy – because he put the turbo inside the blues. Like Jeff, I learned how to take a deep breath and trust my fingers almost like a child going down a water slide.”

Is it because in situations like that, it’s more about heart and soul than technicality?

“Anybody can practice scales up and down. But there’s something about coming down a water slide. You don’t know how you’re going to land; it might be on your head or on your feet.

“That’s what happens when you deviate from the melody. John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter taught me a lot. It’s the art of improvisation, entering the unknown. People would ask Wayne how he practices, and he’d tell them, ‘We don’t know what we are going to play; how do you practice the unknown?’

“I learned improvisation from Coltrane. I learned cosmic music from Sun Ra. I learned down-to-earth music from the Grateful Dead because they were heavily immersed in the folk and bluegrass worlds. And don’t dismiss the guitar playing of Bob Dylan. He played a lot of great guitar, which worked beautifully with his vocals. I’ve learned from many musicians, especially the incredible women I mentioned earlier.”

Playing along to soul singers is something nearly every guitar player could learn something from.

“I don’t care who you are, whether you are Al Di Meola or not, I’d recommend this to any guitar player. If you spend even one day learning how to play and phrase like those lady soul singers, you will become a better musician. This is the truth. This is genuinely the most important part of the interview – right now. The only thing people will remember about your music is how you made them feel.

“They are not going to remember all the fast scales and ‘Look at what I can do!’ moments. But they will remember those three notes that made the hairs stand on the back of the neck and tears come out of their eyes, even if they don’t know why. That’s a whole other element, one I call spirit. Some people don’t know how to play with spirit, heart and soul. Those are three very important ingredients.”

Music isn’t a sport at the end of the day – especially for the listener.

“If you just practice all day and night going really fast, after a while, it’s a bit like going to the gym and seeing somebody flexing their muscles. Big deal. So what? Playing with spirit is like giving someone a hug that lasts for infinity. Time stops.”

Are there any songs that you think demonstrates this best?

“There’s a note Jimi Hendrix plays in All Along the Watchtower that makes you feel like you are entering eternity. It’s like being from Kansas and having only seen the Pacific Ocean on a postcard, then going to Hawaii and putting your feet in the water. That’s when you understand the totality and absoluteness of an ocean. A lot of musicians don’t understand how to play like that, but Chick Corea can.

“You have to learn how to dive into infinity through one note. It’s like learning how to French kiss correctly – to be fully alive with all your senses but no guilt, shame or embarrassment. Take the inhibitions and all that stuff out. You will see how beautiful it is to interact so intimately. That’s what a guitar player is. The guitar is a very naked and sensuous instrument. That’s just the way it is.”

The other Michael Jackson track on the album, Whatever Happens, has some harmonic minor lines, but on nylon acoustic. Where’d you learn to use that sound?

“I got a lot of it from my father because he played violin. It’s funny; when I started, people would say I was using a Dorian scale. But the only Dorian I knew was a girl who went to my junior high school. She invited me to go over to her house when her mom was working. I had a good time with Dorian.

“They also said I was using tonic scales, but the only tonic I knew was in gin and tonic. I don’t know, nor do I want to know, about scales because that will get in my way. I would rather feel like a blind man touching someone’s face. They are memorizing something in a completely different way to how someone else would see it.

“I’m not saying ignorance is bliss; I’m saying that if you learn everything, you can take some of the magic away. Don’t lose the magic of self-discovery. There’s something so beautiful about purity and innocence. Again, it’s like that first kiss.”

The Smokey Robinson track, Please Don’t Take Your Love, has a distinct, lively blues tone. What were you using?

“That sound is a combination of three things. The guitar was a really old white Stratocaster going straight into a Dumble amplifier that was lent to me by Alexander Dumble. The tone of that Strat with the Dumble is something magical.

“You stop playing notes, sounds and vibrations, and it all becomes a living sensation. How many players can say they play with a living sensation? Manitas De Plata, Paco De Lucía, John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock. The main ingredients for me are spirituality and sensuality. Without those two things, I wouldn’t play guitar like this. I wouldn’t want to be on this planet.”

Get On is an interesting piece of music. Do you play differently knowing someone like Miles Davis is on the same track?

‘I’m almost 80. I’ve learned how to diversify my portfolio and my Rolodex of expression, tones and vibration. When I first heard this song with Miles, I had to trust that I knew enough about what he was doing.

“Certain music comes from Africa, and that went on to influence stuff played by Cubans and Puerto Ricans, all this sensual music like guahira, bolero, charanga. If you listen to the African band Kékélé, you will hear a lot of Santana in there. I have to give credit to the musicians because they knew how to make music feel like it’s alive. It’s not just notes and clever inversions. I always go back to something physical.

“You have to make people feel. They can’t take it or leave it. The song has to speak to them. They will stop all conversations because they are enthralled and captivated. The sound is making love to them. And it takes trust. If there’s no trust, you won’t get the goods. With music, you gotta give the goods, man. Otherwise it’s just too clever and intellectual, and that stuff is boring.”

You’ve said Stevie Ray Vaughan once came to you in a dream and told you to use his Dumble Steel String Singer amp for a performance at Madison Square Garden. Not many people can say that.

“I call them visitations. I get visitations from Miles Davis sometimes, as well as B.B. King. You don’t have to be dead to visit me. Sometimes a dream is not a dream; someone has come back to communicate with you.

“I had a dream about Miles where I went to his concert and someone said, ‘Miles knows you are here and wants to see you in his dressing room.’ He asked how I was doing and started writing on a bit of paper, which he then gave to me. And just as I was about to read it, I woke up. I have to analyze what he was trying to tell me.

“It’s like that with Stevie Ray and Jaco Pastorius. I feel very honored that these people come to me. Sometimes I feel like I’m like [John F. Kennedy International Airport] and all these musicians are landing on me and sharing things. I have to figure out what it all means.”

What exactly did Stevie tell you?

“With Stevie, he was saying, ‘Carlos, where I am, I don’t have any fingers; I am only spirit.’ He missed putting his fingers on a guitar and making the speakers push air. He told me to call his brother Jimmie [Vaughan] and ask him to lend me his amp, the #007 Dumble, and then play it with a Strat so he could feel it through me. You know that Ghost movie with Whoopi Goldberg? There’s a part where a ghost comes into her body so he can feel. That’s what Stevie was doing.

"He wanted to utilize my body and hands because he missed playing guitar. Jimmie wasn’t sure at first. Fortunately, Stevie’s tech, René Martinez, had the same dream and called Jimmie, which is how we convinced him to lend me the amplifier. The last person to borrow it was John Mayer. Let’s just say Jimmie doesn’t loan that thing out very easily.”

Rightly so. For those of us waiting in vain for Jimmie Vaughan to give us the green light on the Dumble, how would you describe the sound of that amp?

“It sounded like everything I love about Peter Green when he played a certain kind of heavenly blues. My mom once asked me, ‘Mijo, do you like Whitney Houston?’ and I said ‘of course.’ She then told me that when Whitney sang, her voice would become a legion of angels. I think my mom knew what she was talking about.

“Sometimes when you play, you channel things. One person I haven’t mentioned too much is Michael Bloomfield. I miss him a lot. He was a great player who knew how to tap into things. Those Paul Butterfield Blues Band albums, like the [self-titled] debut and East-West, are incredible, with songs like Born in Chicago. And the stuff he played with Bob Dylan, forget about it. Michael Bloomfield was a hero beyond heroes to me.

“But the guy who got me out of all that stuff was [Hungarian jazz, pop and rock guitarist] Gábor Szabó. The way he could play ballads was amazing. Listen to his album Spellbinder [1966] and you will hear a lot of Santana in there. Anyone reading this should listen to Hungarian gypsy music. There is nothing more romantic than hearing that stuff. It really pulled me out of the blues, which is something we all need from time to time.”

• Sentient is out now via Candid.
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If there's one thing that Isaiah Sharkey knows how to do on guitar, it's play tastefully.

And throughout his years as connoisseur of the instrument, whether as a solo artist, as part of D'Angelo's lauded Vanguard on Black Messiah, or as a sideman and session player to the likes of John Mayer, Chris Martin, Corinne Bailey Rae, Keith Urban, and Paul Simon, he has come to realize the magic ingredient for concocting a good guitar solo… and it's simpler than you may think.

“One thing I found out, playing with different artists, is when you're looking at the front row [when] you're on stage, and you're seeing these people sing melodies or sing [a] solo from the record, that means something,” he says, in an interview with Reverb – his Ritter Princess Isabella jazz guitar in hand.

“A George Benson, or John Mayer, or B.B. King, or Albert King solo, you can almost sing it. The complexity is in the fact that you're thinking of it as the human voice, and it's something about that that connects to the soul and energy of other people.”

As Sharkey explains, it's “definitely taking the ego out of it all”. While it's easy to show off the breadth of your chops, the nuance is asking yourself, “What does it [the song] call for? What is the moment? What's gonna make the moment shine and stand out and make people feel good?”

He continues, “And if it makes you feel good, then that's all that matters. And my dad used to always say, ‘What comes from the heart reaches the heart.’”

In an interview with Guitar World a couple of years back, the in-demand session ace talked about the difference between playing guitar and being a guitarist, and why he's never chased the prospect of being a celebrity player.

Jimmy Rip has looked back on his time working with Jerry Lee Lewis, and recalled his experiences of recording a legion of electric guitar greats over a four-year period for the late pianist/singer's 39th album, Last Man Standing.

Released in 2006, the record sees Lewis dueting with other members of the rock ’n’ roll elite – including Jimmy Page, B.B. King, Buddy Guy and more – on a score of covers. For producer/guitarist Rip, the four-year recording process brought some wild moments, but his memories of putting such an ambitious project together were nothing but joyous.

“I had nothing but a blast making that record,” he tells Guitar World as part of a soon-to-be-published interview. “Needless to say, Jerry’s dangerous reputation preceded him, but in the four years it took to finish that record, we did nothing but laugh and rock ‘n’ roll.”

Across its 21 tracks, Rip formed a fruitful tandem with his “dear friend” Kenny Lovelace, who was Lewis’s guitar player and band leader over a staggering 55-year spell. But they weren’t the only players bringing some electric guitar spice to proceedings.

“Of course, there was what I’m sure is the greatest guest list on any disc in rock history,” Rip continues. “If you’re only speaking about the guitar-playing invitees, there was Jimmy Page, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, and Neil Young.”

Capturing such a stellar cast, naturally, had its challenges. Rip was tasked with recording the contributions of each guest player – a mission that took him around the globe.

“I traveled around the world for four years, recording the 22 guests in total in some crazy places, like hotel rooms, rehearsal rooms, and kitchens,” he says. “I had a mic, a preamp, a laptop, and a relentless drive to show the world how great Jerry Lee still was.”

Most tracks saw Lewis reshaping a song in his own sharply dressed style, with ties between his guests and the original songwriters common. That saw Page aiding Lewis’ take on Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll, Ronnie Wood helping him cover Mick Jagger’s solo track, Evening Gown, and John Fogerty starring as he recoloured CCR’s Travelin’ Band.

The full conversation with Jimmy Rip is due to be published online in the coming weeks.

There’s a legend that has long circulated in guitar circles – one of those reciprocal, lighting of the flame moments – in which Billy Gibbons, vocalist and guitarist of Texas legends ZZ Top, attended a B.B. King session when he was just a child.

However, there’s truth to this particular legend. Indeed, the event left Gibbons indebted to the genre to the point that he went on to make a career of saluting the blues, seasoned-up with a heaped spoonful of boogie-woogie rock ‘n’ roll.

Gibbons has variously recalled being aged 5-7 at the time, but he’s never been quite clear on the exact timing – perhaps unsurprising given the 70-odd years that have passed since. However, writing to Guitar World, Gibbons recalls many details of the day with surprising clarity.

The trip, he explains, came about thanks to his father’s connections. Frederick Royal Gibbons was a noted orchestra conductor, concert pianist, and organ player who had a long and successful career – and, by the time Billy was born, a bulging contacts book.

“My dad extended the directive to climb aboard and accompany an excursion to the recording studio, where some executive biz was to take place,” Gibbons writes, in his own inimitable prose.

“I was ushered into the tracking room and took a chair against the side wall and was instructed to remain and stay quiet.”

The tracking room in question was the domain of record producer Bill Holford, located on the corner of Montrose and Westheimer in Houston, Texas – “and known nationally as the notorious ACA Studio.”

The site was famed for good reason. It was one of the first multi-track studios in the country and, as such, drew the great and good of early- to mid-20th-century talent. Lightnin’ Hopkins recorded there. Little Richard, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Memphis Slim also laid down tracks in the room.

At the time of the session, Gibbons was so young he could only dream of one day making music in such a spot, but he was not oblivious to what he was witnessing – or the unspoken exchanges.

“There was enough awareness as to what was going to take place that a wave of anticipation immediately fell swoop,” he remembers. “The space was fairly empty, and yet, the absence created a stir of curiosity. The lack of noise was intriguing.”

Gibbons found himself firmly fixed to the chair his father had left him in and watching as the previously dormant space transformed into a bustling scene – all ready for one of the most influential guitarists of the 20th century to take up residence and do his thing.

“Here came a line of guys with their gear going about setting up and properly arranging the group’s designated spots at B.B.’s insistence,” Gibbons recalls. “My dad stepped in with Bill Holford to greet the ensemble, and then in came ‘The King.’”

Gibbons memory of first laying eyes on King is remarkably vivid. What’s more, King’s way of handling himself also made an impression.

“B.B. shook hands with a smile,” notes Gibbons. “He exchanged a few remarks about having worked previously in Houston, making records. [Then] after some discussion of B.B.’s selected songs, the getting-down-to-business was underway.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gibbons says King soon noticed his movements being documented by this young apprentice.

“B.B. stepped over and asked if I liked electric guitar,” the ZZ Top man recalls. “I grinned – and that was it!”

As mentioned, Gibbons is uncertain on the dates. Guitar World has reviewed the ACA log books, now digitized and hosted by the University of Houston – and there were at least two B.B. King sessions at ACA in the ’50s, both of which appear to have taken place in 1953.

Gibbons has previously supposed the session happened later, around ’57, but Guitar World could not find a date that tallies with this in the log book, nor mention of the labels associated with King in the late-’50s documentation.

The tracks on the slate for the first session in ’53 are listed as Remember Me, What A Difference, I Don't Believe It and I Can't Put You Down. The second session lists takes of I Did Everything I Could, I've Learned My Lesson, Come On Baby Take a Swing With Me and (I Want You To) Love Me.

Many of these don't appear to have seen release – possibly because King was predominantly working with another label at the time – but the latter seems likely to be a working title for (Please) Love Me, released that same year.

Regardless of the specific tracks, Gibbons reports that the group did not waste time laying it down.

“A quick runthrough by the band got the ball rolling,” remembers Gibbons. “Take one came over and then the count. It was three minutes of masterful execution and then on to another number – a superb experience witnessing a series of one-take deliveries.”

For the young Billy, watching B.B. King play was electrifying in itself, but in another sign of things to come, he confesses he found himself enthralled by the tools the blues maestro wielded.

“I vividly recall – which I learned later – B.B. was using a blond, [Gibson] ES-5, triple-pickup, single-cutaway,” Gibbons tells Guitar World.

“There were a couple of [Fender] Tweed amplifiers across the room,” he continues. “They were out of the way to let the amps blare it out, away from the rest of the group. It was effortlessly lively and at the same time, agreeably stone serious.”

The ES-5 provides another clue to the date – there’s an amazing image of King [dressed in shorts – above] playing the guitar onstage with the Bill Harvey band in Memphis around 1950. It’s not conclusive, but does suggest that the session likely took place earlier in the decade than first thought.

Gibbons then remembers that the band decided to take an extended break, and he says he even took note of this.

“[It’s] a time-tested, studio must-do, which is practiced to this day,” observes Gibbons. “The art of taking one's time to settle into the pocket makes all the difference in laying it down and enriching the groove.”

Up until that point, Gibbons appears to have maintained a respectful silence – albeit it with a grin on his face.

“As the session wrapped, B.B. came over to tell me he knew my dad and asked if I had taken it all in with a good time,” recalls Gibbons. “Needless to say, I believe B.B. enjoyed my loud response of, ‘Yes, sir!’”

Gibbons would not receive his own electric guitar until his 13th birthday, but the King session seems like the starting point of his personal odyssey – before all of those more famous stories of his time with Jimi Hendrix, catching Elvis, or ZZ Top’s colossal success. Witnessing King proved truly formative.

Gibbons still describes the memory as “a treasured moment, which lingers on”. Indeed, some 50 years on from the session, Gibbons got to return the favor – performing Tired of Your Jive with B.B. King as part of the latter’s star-studded, 80th birthday celebration record, B.B. King & Friends: 80.

We can only imagine how the young Gibbons might have felt knowing that years later ‘The King’ would call him ‘friend.’

Vintage blues is all about character and personality. The great guitarists from the 1930s onwards were truly laying the foundation for the blues-infused guitar music we all love now. Each player had their own clear identity and unique ways of approaching a solo. Personally, I’ve always been drawn to guitarists with character and culture in their playing; players that you can recognize from a mile away when you hear them.

Blues is a feeling, a language, a voice that evolved through the beautiful blending of musical cultures. African American spirituals and work songs infused with elements of European folk music… and this approach of blending musical ideas is extremely apt when it comes to the hallmarks of the vintage blues sound: blues and jazz colliding in the coolest ways you’ve ever heard!

The six players that we’ll be taking a closer look at really knew how to harness the raw expression of pentatonic scales and juxtapose it with the smoother, more sophisticated note choices associated with jazz music. Each of our six example licks will feature this balance of yin and yang musical moods.

The major and minor pentatonic scales lay the foundation, and with some harmonic awareness (knowing which chord you're playing over at any given time), we can add particular chord tones, extensions and flavorful notes to give your playing intent and melodic focus. Outlining the changes like this not only gives solos a more song-like structure, but is an easy way of sounding more jazzy.

All the following six examples are based in the key of G major so let's go!

Charlie Christian

Charlie Christian was a true pioneer of the swinging pre-bop era (approximately 1930-1945), and what he did to solidify the electric guitar’s place in the jazz world was immeasurable. Only 25 years old when he tragically passed, his playing was full of essential hot jazz vocabulary and maturity. His phrasing had an unstoppable momentum with boatloads of swing and groove, and his tone was bold, confident and strong, often sounding more like a horn player than a guitarist.

Charlie always knew how to clearly outline the changes. He had a handful of simple, commonly used shapes that he would favor, and he would decorate these shapes with extensions such as the 6, b7, 9 and even the b3 courtesy of the minor pentatonic scale.

Liberal use of chromatic passing notes and enclosing the major 3rd (ie playing notes either side of it) will get you a long way as you play through the changes for the opening 8 bars of a 12 bar blues in G. Notice the tasty Cm6 chord in bar 6 – this is something discussed in the video portion of this lesson.

T-Bone Walker

T-Bone Walker had style, showmanship and energy in his back pocket. His licks could be down and dirty, or poetic little clusters of jazz sophistication. His biting, twangy and overdriven tone was truly unique in a time where guitar players were generally after fatter, warmer sounds.

T-Bone was all about vibe, spontaneity and a truly distinct phrasing style and tone. For the following example, you'll stick mostly with the G minor blues scale (G Bb C Db D F – G minor pentatonic with the addition of the b5). Finishing on G major's major 3rd, the B note provides insightful harmonic savvy.

For that biting T-Bone tone pick right next to the bridge. And make sure to under-do your string bends for authenticity: remember, these guys used heavy flat wound strings, no gauge 0.08 or 0.09 string sets favoured back then!

B.B. King

B.B. King played the guitar the same way that he sang: with feel, heart and passion in every single note. His control over dynamics, vibrato, touch and tone was second to none and he could captivate you with just a handful of well chosen notes. Often using the guitar as a second voice to respond to his vocals with, each and every one of his phrases is full to the brim with emotion and melodic purpose.

In the true spirit of The King, we focus on blending small portions of the major and minor pentatonic scales here and leave plenty of space between our phrases to really let the music speak. Dynamic playing is a must – whisper some notes and shout others, and get some fast finger vibrato going on any long held notes.

Grant Green

Grant Green really defines the jazz/blues genre. His playing is the perfect blend of both worlds and is an exciting and accessible place to start your journey if you’re looking to add jazzy flourishes to your 12 bar blues solos. His playing heavily features the minor pentatonic and blues scales, but he’ll throw in some super tasty bebop II-V licks along the way. The Charlie Parker of the electric guitar.

We open our example solo with one of Grant Green’s greatest tricks; G minor blues scale double stops. Make sure to keep your fourth finger anchored down on the root note. Let the double stops ring clear like a bell, with no muffled notes. Similar to the Wes example, you'll use the V chord (D7 is the V chord of G major) as our chance to jazz things up a little with an altered line featuring chromaticism and a #5 courtesy of a D augmented triad (D F# A#/Bb).

Wes Montgomery

For many fans, Wes Montgomery took the baton from Charlie Christian and ran with it! He brought a wealth of new, sophisticated bebop vocabulary to the blues and had the smoothest tone you’ll ever hear. The most advanced jazz improviser of his day, capable of the most complex altered lines, upper extensions, chord solos and tri-tone substitutions. But all that said, he never strayed too far from the origins of the blues. You can hear it in his fingers and his soulful expression.

If there’s one quick way to “Wes-ify” your playing, it’s with the use of blues scale octaves. Make sure you’re muting any unwanted notes in the fretting hand. You'll get a little fancy on the D7 chord at the end and play an altered lick, focusing on the #9, b9 and #5 extensions (these are popular exotic jazzy notes). Picking with your thumb like Wes is optional as we navigate the final few bars of a blues in G.

George Benson

George Benson ushered in a new generation of blues inspired jazz guitar. A player with serious technical chops and an insane feel for groove and swing, with an ability to solo over the most complex of jazz chord progressions. As a fantastic songwriter and composer in his own right, he had a real pop sensibility which allowed him to craft melodic and truly memorable lines. George spoke highly of Charlie Christian and the influence he had on his own playing. I’m certain Charlie would’ve spoken equally highly of George if he’d had the pleasure of hearing him play.

This final example is also the jazziest. It starts with upper extension notes over the D7 chord courtesy of a Cmaj7 arpeggio (the notes of which are C E G B), before bringing things back down to earth with a G minor blues scale (G Bb C Db D F) line featuring a couple of quick hammer-ons and pull-offs to the b5 and back. It then switches to a major blues tonality targeting the 3rd and the 6th degree, a la Charlie Christian. You'll close with a couple of choice jazz chord voicings; a rootless D9, and a 3rd inversion (b7 is the lowest note, an F note) of G13.

If you've been anywhere near the cinema lately and managed to catch Sinners – the buzzy new movie starring Michael B. Jordan – you may have noticed a familiar figure at the end.

Spoiler warning for those who haven't, but Sammie (who is played by Miles Caton for the majority of the film) survives, and lives on as someone who looks very much like Buddy Guy... although, it actually is Buddy Guy.

The cameo continues the legendary bluesman's ongoing mission to keep the blues alive – and, although Guy has previously hit the road for an extended farewell tour, he very much intends to keep on playing.

“They put that in: ‘farewell tour,’” clarifies Guy in an interview with Variety. “I’m having kind of a delayed farewell tour; maybe after this year, I might say that. But I’m still playing some of the big festivals.

“Bobby Rush, Willie Nelson, and me, they call us the last of the 89- and 90-year-olds that’s still out there, and that’s kind of kept me to say, ‘Buddy, you better go back out there and play a little more, because there ain’t nobody left after you of that age that’s still standing around.' Because B.B. King was in a wheelchair for maybe four or five years before he died, and I’m not on crutches yet. So I want to at least go another year.”

He continues, “Age takes effect on your voice, your walk, whatever you do as you get up into your 80s. And damn, I’m near 90 years old, man. You can’t do what you did when you was 25 or 26. But I’m gonna give you the best I got, and that’s all I got.”

In 2023, Guy told Guitar World that his previously-announced retirement is not a “full retirement. It's just time for me to be done with traveling” – insisting that he doesn't “want to cheat people”.

“I have a reputation for giving 100 percent, but I’m 87 now, and I can’t kick my leg as high as I did when I was 27,” he said. “I’ll still do blues festivals and one-offs, but I can’t tour the world anymore. I’m too old to be jumpin’ from town to town on a bus. I’ll still be playing guitar; I’ll do that until I can’t.”

The blues great's (very welcome) change of heart means he has a generous list of U.S. tour dates coming up, running through August. Earlier this year, he joined the star-studded 2025 Experience Hendrix Tour lineup on the final date of the tour in Atlanta, Georgia, to pay tribute to the late Jimi Hendrix.

If you managed to catch the latest Michael B. Jordan movie Sinners, you might have spotted a very familiar figure who's a dead-ringer for Buddy Guy. Spoiler alert: it is indeed Buddy Guy. Much like Sammie (the character Guys plays in the movie), the 88-year-old still plays at his club in Chicago – all in the name of keeping the blues alive.

“There’s very few radio stations other than satellite who play blues now,” he tells Variety. “And the older people I learned from is no longer with us. But when I was coming up, on the AM stations everybody’s records were being played. There was gospel, jazz and the blues, and everybody knew who the late Lightnin’ Hopkins was.”

However, according to Guy, blues pioneers aren't as well-known among the younger generation anymore. “They’re like, ‘Who is that? Who’s Muddy Waters?’ My grandkids don’t know nothing about the blues until they hit 21 and come up in the club while I’m there, and they say, ‘Granddad, I didn’t know you could do that!’

“So I’m 100% trying to support it so the next generation of white or Black kids can hear it and know more about the blues that was created way before the British type of (blues-rock) stuff come along and all the different types of music we have now,” he asserts with conviction. “Muddy Waters and BB King, I knew ’em before they passed away, and they told me, ‘Man, if you outlive me, just try to keep the blues alive.’

The triad of Guy, Waters, and King goes way back. When Guy moved to Chicago from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he didn’t think he was good enough to play guitar with Waters or even make a record. In fact, he was previously working as a custodian at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

“But I come up to Chicago, and the next thing I know, Muddy was asking me to play,” he related in a 2015 Guitar World interview. “And I found out that the money Muddy was making wasn’t much more than I was making working day jobs at LSU. But here’s Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson… and they were having so much fun just playing. And I learned that they were playing for the love of music, not the love of money.”

As for B.B. King, one of Guy's ultimate guitar heroes, he imparted valuable advice that the veteran blues guitarist still recalls to this day.

“B.B. King once told me that he’d never play the same thing twice,” he recalled in a 2023 Guitar World interview. “He said, ‘If you come to hear me play, you’ll never hear me play anything as I did before.’ So if you come and see a Buddy Guy show, you won’t hear me intentionally try and do anything note for note.”

Guy recently performed on the final date of the 2025 Experience Hendrix Tour at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta.

B.B. King was already a 20-year veteran bluesman when he began to seep into mainstream America's consciousness during the late '60s, via the praise of rock guitarists like Eric Clapton and Mike Bloomfield and an opening spot on a 1969 Rolling Stones tour.

At MCA, King's label, a young producer named Bill Szymczyk approached King about recording with New York session musicians. A somewhat reluctant B.B. agreed to do half an album with the studio crew and half live (at the Village Gate) with his band. The result was the now-classic Live and Well.

The session portion went so well, in fact, that a few months later, in September 1969, the group reconvened to record the epic LP Completely Well. The nine-track platter was not only King's breakthrough album, it launched the modern blues era largely on the strength of a crossover smash called The Thrill Is Gone.

Just who was this dream team, and what was their hit-making formula? Szymczyk's first call was to veteran session drummer/contractor Herb Lovelle, who reached out to guitarist Hugh McCracken, keyboardist Paul Harris, and a young bassist named Jerry Jemmott.

Jemmott had cracked the lofty studio scene a year earlier when he saved the session for Aretha Franklin’s Think by coming up with a funky bassline that brought the track together.

“The goal was to shake up B.B.'s music and make it chart-friendly,” Jemmott told Bass Player. “The first thing we did was turn all of his shuffle tunes into straight-eighth R&B, pop, or rock feels. The key song was Why I Sing the Blues (a hit from Live and Well), and the concept took off from there.”

The scenerio at the old Hit Factory on West 47th Street was as follows: King would stand in the middle of the room and sing and play his songs, and the rhythm section surrounding him would come up with parts and eventually an arrangement. After several run-throughs, they would record a few takes.

Jemmott played his 1964 Jazz Bass (which would be stolen soon afterward), strung with La Bella flatwounds, and he went direct and through an Ampeg B-15 in the room. Feeling that his sound came from his fingers and the instrument, though, he requested that only the direct signal be recorded.

The Thrill Is Gone is a 12-bar minor blues written by fellow bluesman Roy Hawkins (with Rick Darnell) that King had been playing as a shuffle for years, but he wasn't quite happy with it. That soon changed when Lovelle put a locked-down, straight-eighth R&B feel to it.

Still, Szymczyk wondered what to do with the tune afterward. He joked, “How about B.B. with strings?” After a laugh, they realized it might just work. Arranger Bert de Coteaux was called in, and he balanced his violins with a stabbing cello part inspired by Lovelle and Jemmott's syncopated interplay.

The track begins with Lovelle's drum fill and Jemmott's pickup note – the move that defines his part – leading into the 12-bar intro.

“What came to me, hearing the song, was the way I played bossa novas on upright: that subtle half-step-below approach. But on electric bass it was too pronounced, so I slid into the tonic to make it smoother.

“To me, it was a two feel, like Think, but with an added pickup and an extra eighth-note after one and three. Herb and I always thought in half-time.”

With the pattern firmly in place, Jemmott adds variation via his ascending or descending lead-ins to the next chord change. Of note is Lovelle's kick drum pattern, which often puts two 16ths against Jemmott's eighth-note pickups.

“Herb and I would lock without playing the exact same figure. It enabled us to enhance the pattern and the song, and it freed us up to do what we wanted within the support framework. It was like a conversation between us.”

Also of interest is the Gmaj7 chord in the turnaround, which is usually a dominant 7 chord in the standard minor blues form.

Jemmott continues his previous 12-bar path in the first sung verse, save the different lead-in in bar 16. The second sung verse, features the entrance of light strings and more Jemmott variations, including his use of quarter-notes.

King's first solo chorus is at 01:38, with an increase in the presence of the strings and Jemmott's slick lead-in. For King's second solo turn, at 03:14, Jemmott introduces an effective new move by dropping to a quarter-note on beat two.

He continues this into the first part of the rideout, which stays on the tonic into the fade (with probing cellos back in). “It was a way to lock it down and ride out into the sunset, and the steady tonic fit with the song's somber mood.”

Think of the late, great B.B. King and a picture of his famous ‘Lucille’-model Gibson with its ES Artist-type sealed body will likely come to mind, although these didn’t actually appear in Standard and Custom versions until 1980.

Before then, B.B. had long plied his high-profile trade, invariably with a standard ES model and typically the 355. Currently, Gibson Custom has a Lucille Legacy and ‘Live at the Regal’ ES-335 in the catalogue, and now this latest historic homage from 1974 has joined the ranks.

The ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ pulls in another couple of heavyweights, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, unquestionably rockstars of their day, and a mega-profile boxing match in Kinshasa, Zaire on 30 October 1974, known as one of the greatest sporting events of the 20th century.

The fight was scheduled to happen on 25 September at the end of Zaire 74, a three-day music festival, but it was delayed due to Foreman injuring himself in a sparring session.

The festival went ahead as planned, featuring B.B. King, James Brown, Miriam Makeba, Bill Withers, The Crusaders and more, and is documented in 2008’s Soul Power, plus B.B.’s Live In Africa film. It’s the guitar B.B. King was playing back then that’s replicated here.

As we very carefully pull this model from its accompanying case, you’d almost believe it was 50 years old with its light ageing.

There are plenty of cracks to the body lacquer, which has an old-looking amber tint; this turns the edge binding nicotine yellow with the notable exception of the white binding around the tortoiseshell pickguard. There’s also a little patina and ageing to the gold hardware.

These are big guitars, though this one is attractively manageable, with its relatively slim neck. It’s not over-wide in lower positions, but it really fills out to quite a full-shouldered girth by the 12th fret. The light rolling to the ’board edge binding adds to the feeling of age, too.

Despite the ‘Stereo’ truss rod cover, thankfully the output is mono here, and we have the additional five flavours of the Varitone, which get a little thinner and almost phasey-sounding as you play through them.

The pickups seem only lightly potted (you get plenty of pick ‘clonk’ if you hit the covers), but these hybrid T-Types sound extremely sweet and yet have good articulation and quite widely contrasting voices between the bite at the bridge and the smoother, clear neck voice.

You might want to play on the cleaner side of the tracks, but try cranking it up a little – it damn-near takes off!

• Priced $9,999/£8,999, the B.B. King 'Rumble in the Jungle' 1974 ES-355 is available now. See Gibson for more details.

Gibson has released its latest B.B. King tribute electric guitar – and it’s a recreation of his famed 1974 ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ ES-355.

Though the blues great is most commonly associated with his pristine Ebony-finished semi-hollow models, King was also well-known for playing a huge array of extended ES variations throughout his career.

Those include his ‘Live at The Regal’ ES-335 – which Gibson revived back in February 2023 – and, of course, his legendary Lucille, which the firm reimagined and treated to a fancy figured maple finish in 2022 as the ‘Lucille Legacy’.

Now, Gibson has brought back another high-profile King six-string, shining the spotlight on the Walnut-finished 1974 ES-355 that was heavily used in the latter half of the 1970s.

Specifically, King most notably played his original model at a music festival that promoted the famous ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ heavyweight boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali in Zaire 1974.

Along with the likes of Live at the Regal and Live in Japan, King’s Rumble in the Jungle concert is considered one of his greatest live outings, and saw the blues great solo through tracks such as The Thrill is Gone, I Like to Live the Love, Sweet Sixteen, Ain’t Nobody Home and more.

At the core of the performance was the 1974 ES-355 model in question, which, according to Gibson, ended up serving as King’s main guitar for six years. The model that replaced it? The official Gibson Lucille, which the firm released in 1980.

“B.B. King’s performance at the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ was not just a concert – it was a defining cultural moment,” comments Vassal Benford, CEO and Chairman of the B.B. King Music Company. “We are honored to collaborate with Gibson to create a guitar that captures both the artistry and spirit of B.B. King’s legendary performance.

“This instrument is more than a tribute – it’s a continuation of his enduring legacy, ensuring that future generations of musicians can connect with the heart and soul of the blues.”

Gibson has sought to faithfully revive the original Rumble in the Jungle model, with this limited-edition repro offering touches such as the Maestro Vibrola tailpiece, a Varitone switch, Kluson Waffleback tuners, lashings of aged gold hardware and a stunning Walnut colorway.

Other aesthetic specs include a five-ply tortoise pickguard, block inlays, headstock binding and an engraved ‘Stereo’ truss rod.

Build-wise, a body comprising laminated maple top, back and sides houses a red spruce binding, and is joined by an ebony-topped three-piece mahogany neck. To give it a retro 1974 vibe, a light Murphy Lab Aging finish treatment has been applied.

As for tones, a pair of T-Type Custombucker Alnico 5 pickups are joined by Gibson’s classic two volume/two tone combo, as well as the six-position Mono Varitone, which serves as a notch filter control.

Only 100 will be made, with each coming in at $9,999.

Visit Gibson to find out more.

Grace Bowers is part of the vanguard of the new blues-rock generation. In a new interview, she talked about her deep connection to the genre and named the blues legend who compelled her to sharpen her guitar chops.

“It was right when Covid started. I was sitting in my mom's car flipping through radio stations, and I heard B.B. King,” recounts Bowers on The Zach Sang Show. “He was playing Sweet Little Angel [a blues standard recorded by many artists], which is a song off of his very first album.”

“And before I heard this, I was super into hair metal, like really, really cheesy hair metal. Hadn't heard anything else, because that's all I listened to.

“So B.B. King starts this song out. He plays like five notes, and those five notes said more than any of these metal shredders could ever wish they could say. It's so striking, because I'd never heard something like that before, and so I went home, and I started learning his solos, note for note.”

When asked whether she still does that with the work of other guitar players, she responded, “I still sometimes hear someone play something and go back and learn what they played, just so I can incorporate it into my own playing. But there has to be a line between copying and taking inspiration from something.”

In an interview with Guitar World earlier this year, Bowers talked about her blues revelation. “It started with seeing Slash on YouTube playing Welcome to the Jungle," she said.

“I got really into ‘80s music – but that changed when I heard B.B. King when I was 13. I discovered the blues, and now I find myself listening to lots of soul, funk, and great stuff like Mountain, Buddy Miles, Shuggie Otis, and Sly & The Family Stone.”

Bowers' blues cred was recently solidified by a stellar rendition of two Stevie Ray Vaughan classics.

A B.B. King Blues Experience tour – which will take place to honor what would have been the year of the late blues guitar legend’s 100th birthday – has been announced for 2025 in the USA and Europe.

Fronted by King’s own daughter, Claudette, The Thrill Lives On tour will see a band comprising Grammy-winning vocalist Grady Champion and B.B.’s drummer of 30 years, Tony ‘T.C.’ Coleman, tackle a number of the blues great’s iconic cuts.

For the occasion, guitarist Wilbert Crosby has been recruited. Crosby is a Chicago native and blues veteran who has performed alongside the likes of Mavis and Pops Staples, Aretha Franklin, Carey Bell, Eddie ‘The Chief’ Clearwater and others across his career.

Having played with Franklin for five years prior to her death, Crosby has also played guitar with George Benson, and currently sits as the resident guitar player for the B.B. King Band featuring Tito Jackson.

Crosby, Coleman, Champion and Claudette will feature as part of the 10-piece band that will play everything from The Thrill is Gone and When Love Comes to Town, to You Upset Me Baby and Paying the Cost to be the Boss.

According to those involved, these classic King cuts will be reimagined with some additional funk spirit, and will be informed by the sounds of soul and funk groups such as The Gap Band, and Sly and Family Stone.

“We wanted to take these timeless classics and add some funk to it in order to reach a younger and different audience,” Champion notes.

“To have the opportunity to continue sharing my father's music with audiences around the world is a blessing and a privilege,” adds Claudette.

“I'm thrilled to be bringing the B.B. King Blues Experience to the world and allowing new audiences to experience the thrill of this music live.”

The B.B. King Blues Experience Thrill Lives On Tour will take place next year, with dates to be announced.

Any conversations concerning the future of blues will usually include a mention of 25-year-old Mississippi sensation Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram. So it should come as little surprise that he’s met and jammed with nearly all of the acts appearing on Slash’s S.E.R.P.E.N.T. festival, including his hero, Eric Gales…

What will the audience get from your set at S.E.R.P.E.N.T.?

“In recent years, I’ve been adding a lot of funk and R ’n’ B grooves into my show. So the crowd will get a mixture of things – it won’t just be blues or hard rock. As well as songs I haven’t played much before, there are at least two new songs from my upcoming record that we’ll be performing. I also have some new guitars that I’m bringing out…”

That’s interesting. Tell us more!

“I can’t go too deep because I don’t want to upset my family at Fender. But there’s a custom ES-339-style guitar that I’ve started using and another Les Paul-style guitar that I’ve added to the arsenal, both made by another brand. I’ll be using those along with my Fender signatures.”

Is there anything else you’re looking at changing, rig-wise?

“Well, since we last spoke, I ended up going back to the Marshall Shred Master. That one’s back on the ’board. I want to do something different in terms of amps. The plan is to run two Fender DeVilles through with my pedalboard. I’m hoping I’ll have that as my main rig by the time we hit the road for this tour.”

What kind of message do you think this festival sends in terms of culture?

“There are people out there who say the guitar is dead and guitar solos no longer exist. And I know for a fact there will be a lot of great guitar playing at these shows. Our job is to prove that it’s still a thing and that the blues can be directed to a younger crowd, too. There are many forms of contemporary blues and mine is just one of them.”

The festival name itself is an acronym for Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality N’ Tolerance. Many would say these are all things the world needs more of right now… We need to stick up for each other!

“Definitely! The world is in a bit of a tangle at the moment. All it takes is music to give us the hope to heal. It’s this magical thing we can all connect to. You can break boundaries through sound. I love what this festival represents and stands for.”

Eric Gales is on the bill. Given what you’ve said about him in the past, we’re guessing that’s one set you’ll be watching every night…

“Oh yeah! I think I’ve seen him a lot of times by now, and every time I’ve learned something new. I will have my eyes glued, for sure! I actually know a lot of the artists on this line-up.

“I’ve jammed with Eric, Larkin Poe, Robert Randolph and Samantha Fish in the past. Jackie Venson is a great guitar player as well, and I’ve jammed with her, too. I met Warren Haynes one time and it was a great interaction. There are a lot of killers on this tour… It’s a star-studded line-up, for sure!”

On Eric’s last album there was a song called The Storm where he asks ‘How can you love what I do, but hate who I am?’ That’s very poignant, given the message behind this festival.

“Yeah! Stuff like that ties into what the blues is and where it came from. It was originally a form of protest music. It was used to tell people to resist and talk about the tough situations they were being put through. That said, music can help you forget about all the bad things and ugliness in the world. It’s all about beauty and positivity, even if it originates from people struggling.”

Is it safe to assume you’re a fan of Slash? What are your favourite things about his playing?

“I think everyone knows about Slash and the band Guns N’ Roses. How could you not? My introduction to him was actually through the video game Guitar Hero! He did that live show a long time ago called Slash’s Blues Ball, which there are recordings of. I’ve always loved the version of The Thrill Is Gone on that album. I’ve been a big fan of his guitar playing, especially the bluesy side of it, for a long time.”

Why do you think he ended up becoming one of the most iconic guitar players of all-time?

“People have always been drawn to Slash because he’s technical but also has a lot of feel. He’s definitely not just an average pentatonic player, he has a lot of swagger in how he plays. If you listen to Sweet Child O’ Mine, there are so many different elements – from pentatonic bends to harmonic minor ideas. He’s got a whole lot of range.

“On tracks like November Rain, he could slow down and play from the heart. I learned that myself from an early age. The general public aren’t as interested in your guitar solo as other guitar players. It’s more about the hooks and the catchiness of it all. You can say more with three notes than three thousand.

“Now, let me just say, it’s fun to play three thousand notes! I’ve been there, and I still do it too sometimes. But if you want the audience to feel something powerful, you should simplify your ideas. Slow and steady wins the race, as they say, and someone like Slash always takes you on a journey. He’s a global icon who represents what rock ’n’ roll is, and definitely helped sell a lot of Les Pauls and Marshall heads!”

Have you met him yet?

“I haven’t met or jammed with him ever. We’ve spoken on Instagram a couple of times. I found out from a couple of friends that he was a fan of mine. We talked very briefly online, and then again when he was putting this festival together and wanted to give me the opportunity to play. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to meet him and talk to him properly, just so I can say how much I appreciate him and thank him for inviting me!

“I was digging the Killing Floor cover he did with Brian Johnson from the new album. It was very hard rock, but it also had a funky vibe, too. He’s jammed with B.B. King – not many rockers out there could hang with the blues OGs like that.

“It’s obvious he had a lot of respect for B.B. and it’s clear the respect was mutual. Everyone can hear the blues root in Slash’s music. There can be no doubt he’s a blues player at heart. He almost makes love to the guitar!”

• Live in London is out now via Alligator.
• See S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival for more on Slash's all-star blues fest.

Joe Bonamassa has recently recalled an era when B.B. King used to borrow his amp without any additional effects – and still sound bigger than Bonamassa himself.

“One of the things that I always noticed about the front guys, they always had a bigger sound,” says Bonamassa on the Jay Jay French Connection podcast.

“B.B. King, up until probably the last 15 years of his career, never travelled with an amp. You know, he had a twin back in the day for Live at the Regal. I can hear that. But in the '70s and '80s and early '90s, when I met him, like in '89 or '90, he didn't have an amp.”

“He would use my amp when we played with him because he just travelled with his guitar. So he would use my Twin Reverb and turn it all the way up. And he would sound like B.B. King. And it was a bigger sound than I got out of the Twin Reverb and I never understood that.”

Bonamassa credits B.B. King's fuller and distinct sound, to “manually manifesting the sound in his soul [and] in his mind through the guitar amp, so he would lighten up his attack. The amp would bloom, he would dig in.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Bonamassa also mentions how other blues guitar legends, like Albert King and Freddie King, did the same thing.

“And Albert King same thing you plug into whatever sound bigger than the band. Freddie King, same thing, Quad Reverb and you know, two finger picks, plug into whatever. It sounds like Freddie King, and it always sounded bigger than the band when it was like this.”

In a recent interview with Total Guitar, Bonamassa talked about what makes for a great blues guitarist, sharing it's “taking on influences that aren’t blues-based. It’s got to be something that’s a little bit off the main trail, you know?”

Bonamassa also recently showed his support for emerging jazz fusion guitarist Matteo Mancuso by inviting him up on stage in Berlin.

Last week, Slash released Orgy of the Damned – his first-ever solo blues cover record, which saw the Guns N’ Roses rocker team up with a string of high-profile artists to tackle a string of blues classics.

The release marked the completion of a career goal for the Gibson Les Paul loyalist, whose own playing style and music has been deeply influenced by the blues – and, specifically, one of the genre’s biggest legends, B.B. King.

In Slash’s own words, B.B. King has had an incalculable impact on his playing. In fact, Slash was first introduced to his music long before he even thought about picking up the electric guitar.

Speaking in the latest issue of Total Guitar, Slash discusses all things B.B. King, reflecting on the times he was fortunate enough to jam with the late blues great, and revealing the biggest lesson he learned from the Lucille master. 

“He was the guy, when I was a kid, way, way before I ever thought of picking up a guitar, he was the first traditional blues artist that I was exposed to,” Slash says. “My grandmother played me B.B. King and it stuck with me. 

“I heard a lot of blues artists after that, all around the family and stuff, but B.B. King, the first time I ever heard it, it really stuck with me, and so he ended up being my favourite blues guitar player out of all the greats that I really dig.”

Over his career, Slash has performed alongside King on a handful of occasions. One key encounter took place at the Royal Albert Hall, when the two Gibson players shared the stage with Ronnie Wood, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi to cover The Thrill Is Gone.

For Slash, the gig was merely an affirmation of B.B.’s commitment to his craft, as well as his evergreen approach to working as hard as possible. It's a mindset that has inspired and propelled Slash throughout his own career, and a mentality of his that he attributes solely to the late blues great. 

Slash continues, “He was so cordial to me, and so almost fatherly and nice and generous with his time. That had a positive effect on me. And I played with him a couple of times over the years, and the last time I played with him was at the Royal Albert Hall, and Ronnie Wood was there. 

“It was just a lot of fun. I remember being a little bit nervous, and not really feeling comfortable trying to play, but I was there, so... whatcha gonna do? But it was a really nice moment to spend with him. He was a really sweet guy, and a genuine road dog. 

“This was a guy who spent 70 per cent or even 80 per cent of his entire life working, and I have always admired that. I have probably modelled myself after that because I am a total workaholic. 

“I go, ‘Well B.B. did it, so I can do it!’ Anyway, it was just a great moment. Just being in the same space as one of your all-time favourite and most influential artists.”

Elsewhere in his Total Guitar interview, Slash explained why he swapped his Les Paul for a Fender Stratocaster to cover a Peter Green track.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Total Guitar.

The man born Riley B. King had every right to play the blues. Revered by peers such as Buddy Guy, Freddie King, Albert King, Chuck Berry and Otis Rush, he also garnered a plethora of later admirers, from Clapton and Hendrix to John Lennon and Keith Richards. 

Indeed, pretty much every guitarist that ever bent a string, added vibrato and let that note sing, owes something to King’s style. Today’s fine roster of bluesers, including John Mayer, Eric Gales, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark Jr., Susan Tedeschi, Joanna Connor and Derek Trucks were all, directly or otherwise, affected by him. 

Even Lennon, when asked if there was anything more he’d like to achieve said, “Yes, to play guitar like B.B. King.” Well, listen to John’s solos on The Beatles’ Get Back and the influence is there for all to hear. And check out Peter Green’s sublime guitar on Fleetwood Mac’s Need Your Love So Bad – it has King’s blues DNA all over it.

First steps

Born on the Berclair Cotton Plantation in Itta Bena, Indianola, Mississippi in 1925, King’s parents were sharecroppers, and from a young boy into his early teens Riley picked cotton, worked on a cotton ‘gin’ (the ‘engine’ that separated the fibres from the seeds), or drove a tractor. Due to his parents splitting up when he was just four, King’s maternal grandmother looked after him until she died a few years later. 

During his time in and around Indianola, Riley would have witnessed endemic racism, segregation, deprivation, even the horrors of lynching. Riley, though, sought to distance himself from the brutal things he saw, never wanting his career to be defined by them. As blues legend Buddy Guy tells it: “Whenever we’d have that conversation he’d always lead away from it, making me think: there’s stuff you don’t want to tell here.”

Thankfully, Riley discovered music, initially at his local church when a preacher taught him a few chords on the parlour guitar he’d been given by slide guitar-playing cousin, Bukka White, but also in Indianola’s bustling nightlife. Great blues and jazz artists would come through town to play. 

Too young to venture in, Riley would sneak round the back to listen, totally absorbed by the music he was hearing. By this time, King had also acquired a better instrument with money forwarded from his salary by the plantation owner. It cost 15 dollars.

In 1943, King joined a local gospel group playing in churches in and around Indianola. King, already into the blues, once described how when he played a gospel song, people would pat him on the head and say, “That was good, boy”, but give him nothing for his troubles. When he knocked out a blues tune he’d receive the patronising pat on the head, “but this time they’d put something in the hat”, he quipped.

Blues Boy

Blues was Riley’s ticket off the plantation. In 1948 he moved to West Memphis, Arkansas, where he began making a name for himself in the bars and clubs, and through appearances on Sonny Boy Williamson’s radio show. 

He then gained a regular spot on Radio WDIA, across the river in Memphis, Tennessee. The station re-christened its hit-signing Beale Street Blues Boy, shortened to Blues Boy, then B.B. (he had both ‘Bee Bee’ and ‘B.B. King’ hand-painted on his guitars). 

By this time, King had acquired his first Gibson, a small-bodied non-cutaway L-30, but his jobs earned him enough to buy the instrument with which he’d cut his first record, a P-90‑equipped Gibson ES-125.

In 1951, King recorded Lowell Fulson’s 3 O’Clock Blues. It hit the top of the R&B charts and put King squarely on the map. Even then, his delivery was exquisite. The style, while yet to be refined, was instantly recognisable; effortless vocals punctuated with succinct and idiomatically faultless guitar lines.

While it’s easy to think it all started with King, on his road to creating the style that’s so recognisable today, B.B. found his own guitar heroes. First of these was T-Bone Walker. Texas-born Walker developed a fluid, jazzy style that oozed class, and King found his warm Gibson tone and perfect note choices irresistible. 

“He was the first electric guitar player I heard on record, and I had to have one, too,” King recalled. “I can still hear T-Bone in my mind from that first record, Stormy Monday.” 

Next, enter Benny Goodman Orchestra guitarist Charlie Christian. “Oh boy,” sighed B.B. as he recalled first hearing the groundbreaking jazz guitarist. “Charlie Christian was amazing. He was a master of diminished chords, and a master of new ideas, too.” 

King’s next influence, a Romani guitarist from Liberchies in Belgium, is perhaps more surprising. As King put it: “A friend of mine who was in the army came back to Mississippi and said, ‘I’ve brought some records back and I want you to listen to this fella.’ He then played me Django Reinhardt. I instantly fell in love with him, his guitar seemed to talk. So those three are my guitar idols. 

“Each one had something that seemed to go through me like a sword. It’s something that happens and you just know, on some spiritual level, that this was meant for you to hear.”

The road to Lucille

Django had played a Selmer Maccaferri guitar, but Walker and Christian both used Gibsons, so it’s unsurprising that King had also chosen the Gibson route. From the earlier L-30 and ES-125 he graduated to flashier archtops like the L-5 and three-pickup ES-5 (as used by T-Bone), a short-scale Byrdland, and the jazzers’ favourite, an ES-175. He also had brief flirtations with a Les Paul Goldtop and a single-pickup Fender Esquire.

By trialling these various instruments King was clearly waiting for the perfect model, but it wouldn’t roll off Gibson’s production line until 1958. This was the ES-300 series, incorporating ES-330, ES-335, ES-345 and ES-355. King sporadically played all four models, but eventually settled on the blingiest, the ES-355, which the company later tweaked to create the B.B. King ‘Lucille’ model.

Why Lucille? While playing at a dance one cold Arkansas night, a fight broke out. During the fracas, which was over a woman, someone kicked over the burning pail of kerosene intended to keep the place warm. Instead the venue caught alight, and King ran in to rescue his beloved L-30 from the flames. He later learned that the woman’s name was Lucille, and every subsequent B.B. guitar would bear her moniker.

At its best, King’s guitar style was a fluid mix of major and minor pentatonic licks, mixed with complex jazz-style flurries. From his early playing years it morphed from a simplified version of the Lonnie Johnson, Charlie Christian and Django melodic ‘chord tone’ style, as heard on 3 O’Clock Blues, to the more typical pentatonic ‘box shapes’ of T-Bone Walker, which you can hear on When My Heart Beats Like A Hammer from 1988’s collection of B.B.’s early recordings entitled B.B. King – Do The Boogie. 

The ‘B.B. Box’

By 1965 and the legendary Live At The Regal album, King’s style, now fully formed, had come to revolve around what’s known as the ‘B.B. box’. Looked at in the key of A, King would locate the root note A with his first finger at the 10th fret, second string, using this as ‘home’.

From here it was easy to reach all the key major and minor pentatonic notes, both on the string above (the 5th interval at the 12th fret, pushed up to the 6th and flat 7th with a two or three-fret bend, and the flat 5 ‘blue’ note located in between). 

The 2nd and flat 3rd situated one and two frets above ‘home’ on the second string, were easily bent up to major 3rd and 4th, and on the next string down were lower-octave 5th, 6th and flat 7th, at the 9th, 11th and 12th frets. That’s a lot of musical information within a short, four-fret spread.

King’s fluttering finger vibrato is also the stuff of legend. Loving the slide guitar vibrato of cousin Bukka White but not wanting to play bottleneck himself, B.B. created a way to emulate it by wobbling and rotating his first finger on the string. “To get the vibrato started, my thumb is on the neck. But when I play the trill with my finger, my hand is not on the neck at all. It all comes from the wrist,” he once described.

King rarely played rhythm. “I’m horrible with chords,” he once confessed to U2’s Bono, “so I get somebody else to play them.” For 22 years this was his big band’s guitarist, Leon Warren. 

As frontman, King would often sing a line and answer it with a guitar phrase. And when he wasn’t playing, his fretting hand would hang loosely by his side, or he’d hold both arms up in jubilation.

The long road

Tonally, King went from ultra-clean to pretty overdriven, usually through Fender amps or, from the late ’70s onwards, Gibson Lab Series combos. He loved position two on his ES-355’s five-way Varitone switch, which lent a nasal, ‘out of phase’-type tone to his phrases. You can hear all of B.B.’s classic tones and licks on the incredible aforementioned album: 1965’s Live At The Regal.

B.B. King spent his life touring – playing upwards of 300 shows most years – and recording. He sold over 50 million albums and collaborated with everyone from Gary Moore to Elton John. 

Check out 1971’s In London album, featuring guests Peter Green, Steve Winwood and Ringo Starr; 2005’s B.B. King and Friends: 80 with Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Billy Gibbons, Bobby Bland, and Sheryl Crow; and King’s most successful album, the co-headliner with Clapton, Riding With the King from 2000, which sold over 3.5 million copies and took the 2001 Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album (King won 15 Grammys in total). 

Always dressed to impress, B.B. wore tailor-made suits, fancy guitar straps, and that ultimate accessory – his gold-plated, pearl-encrusted Gibson Lucille. This never less than impeccable look was due to a word of early advice from Bukka White. “Bukka told me, ‘Riley, blues musicians should always dress like they’re going to the bank to borrow some money!’”

In this month’s column, I’m showing you another set of licks from my book, 100 Essential Blues Guitar Intros. This month’s subject is blues legend B.B. King. King made every note count using his powerful vibrato trill to wring as much emotion from his playing as possible. Using space in his soloing made him highly melodic, and many of his intro licks are like perfectly composed solos within themselves. 

King’s taste and restraint meant he spent as long he saw fit on an intro phrase. One of his biggest mainstream hits, The Thrill Is Gone is the perfect example of this, as B.B. plays a melodic melodic intro solo all the way through the progression before the vocals come in. 

Lesser blues players would have jumped straight into the song, but King always understood the importance of setting the scene, so let’s explore his mastery of creating tension and release in his intros before getting into actual songs.  

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 3, Bass 7, Middle 6, Treble 7, Reverb 2

KIng was known for his use of a Gibson ES-355 electric guitar and Gibson Lab Series amp to create his warm, jazzy tone. But any guitar will work great here if you select the neck pickup, use a ‘just breaking up’ amp tone (or a smooth but light overdrive from a pedal), and add enough reverb to add a pleasant ambient wash to the tone.

Example 1

Our first example shows how you can get a simple Minor Pentatonic scale idea, in this case B Minor Pentatonic (B-D-E-F#-A), doing all the work for you, as long as you include, as B.B. always did, great phrasing and a sense of space. 

Example 2

This example contains a great B.B. lesson - that you don’t always have to start on beat 1. Again it’s all about phrasing within the B Minor Pentatonic scale here, and using tasty bends such as the one in Bar 1 at beat 3. Also notice the blues curl (quarter tone bend) on the D notes, adding attitude to the Bm chord.

Example 3

This lick is an example of how using space can contrast with more rapid-fire ‘jumpy’ licks. Playing in a different register and position can get you thinking about new ideas, and sometimes restricting yourself to playing on just two strings can help you think more creatively. 

Example 4 

With this one, spend time creating quality quarter-tone bends (blues curls) without overbending, as this would allude to a B Major sound which you don’t want. B.B. frequently referenced the root note (in fact he usually pivoted off it), so this phrase keeps coming back to the note B to match the underlying B Minor chord.  

Example 5

The final lick of this first set in B Minor ties together many of the ideas you have studied in the preceeding phrases. There are varying degrees of string bending, bend and release, plus more of that wide and fast vibrato that’s at the heart of the B.B. King style. 

Example 6

Moving to C Major, this lick starts off with the classic Minor to Major 3rd hammer-on move (Eb-E) followed by a challenging rhythmic phrase where four notes are played evenly on beat 4 against the underlying triplet feel. The blues masters would play these rhythms without thinking even about it!

Example 7

This lick combines C Minor and Major Pentatonic (C-Eb-F-Ab-Bb and C-D-E-G-A) phrases with plenty of string bending and a bend and release in the final bar.

Example 8 

Deciding where to start your intro phrases is something to always keep working on – broadly speaking you can start low, mid-register, or higher up the neck. Having a good knowledge of scales and positions is crucial and opens up options to play in different registers .

Example 9

We go beyond Pentatonic scales in bar 3 with the C Blues scale (C-Eb-F-Gb-G-Bb) over the F7 chord. A great tip is to use the I chord’s blues scale over the IV chord for a really different sound. B.B. often used jazzier approaches like this when the mood took him.

Example 10 

This intro starts off with an ascending C Major Pentatonic phrase in bar 1 followed by a descending C Minor Pentatonic line in bar 2. This creates contrast and movement and an intro like this can start to set the tone for the whole song. 

There are not many guitarists who can rival the influence of B.B. King, the man often described as the King of the Blues. His pioneering guitar style was the catalyst for a huge number of Chicago blues and eventually rock guitarists, and we dare say that anybody who has picked up the electric guitar owes something to him. 

His lyrical style, with its immaculate phrasing, shimmering vibrato, and deeply inherent musicality, is perhaps the pinnacle of expression for which many blues guitarists strive. For more than half a century, King worked tirelessly, releasing over 50 albums and playing upwards of three hundred shows a year and, as a result, he has carved out a legacy that is untouchable. 

Born in 1925 on a plantation in Indianola, Mississippi, King’s fascination with music began at an early age while singing in church. He taught himself to play by listening to the radio and set his heart on a career in music. His popularity grew, and a record contract, radio airplay, and tour dates followed. The rest is music history. 

King’s style developed from an early love of vocalists. He said himself that his favourite musician was Frank Sinatra, and it is evident that B.B. incorporated this influence into his style, seeing improvising as ‘singing through the instrument’. This quality made him truly special. His style had all the musicality of a great vocalist, and the subtleties in his playing are a huge part of the expression he was capable of. 

His phrasing was key to this sound, and each melodic idea was punctuated with space, allowing his solos to breathe. His vibrato also set him apart with its unique quivering style. This gives us some great concepts to take away: to sing like a vocalist when improvising, and that a strong and unique vibrato can become a signature part of one’s sound, adding emotion and expression. 

B.B.’s vocabulary was mostly pentatonic-based but also incorporated a jazzy, chord-tone style of improvisation, as he was influenced by Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, along with the early Chicago blues men such as T-Bone Walker and Lonnie Johnson. 

Our studies incorporate some of these ideas, as well as a pattern referred to as the ‘B.B. Box’. This can be seen as the top three strings of position three of the major pentatonic scale, although it’s really a mix of major and minor, and King would draw from both scales in his solos. 

This shape is really a central part of getting King’s style down, as it allows for the first finger to do most of the vibrato work, especially on the root note, which was perhaps one of the most characteristic elements of King’s style. Aim to be as expressive with these solos as possible and, as always, apply the concepts to your own improvising

Get the tone

Amp settings: Gain 2, Bass 4, Middle 5, Treble 6, Reverb 5

B.B. King is famous for his black Gibson ES-355 affectionately named ‘Lucille’, so something similar would get you the closest to his sound. This is not essential, though, as what we are going for is a full-bodied, clean tone with plenty of sparkle, so any guitar will get you close. A fairly liberal application of reverb will help get those bluesy licks sing.

Study 1. Funky blues

This study looks at B.B.’s style over a funky 12-bar backing track. The ‘B.B. box’ shape is employed through much of this track but, notice how the emphasis is on creating musical phrases rather than running through a scale.

Aim to include some variation in dynamics, as this will give the solo a more musical quality. The backing track can be found below.

Study 2. Slow 12/8 blues

Our second solo is over a slow blues. The rhythmic feel is important here, so experiment with slight variations against the underlying 12/8 feel. This is similar to how a crooner like Sinatra may approach a song, pushing and pulling phrases. The vibrato and articulations are another important factor in this solo, so aim to capture this element.

Notice the Cm9 arpeggio over the F7 chord – this is a very cool sound that B.B. would have borrowed from his jazz influences. Again, the backing track can be found below.

Just over 30 years ago, in November 1992, Gary Moore stepped onstage at London's Town And Country Club to play a show that would later be immortalized on his album, Live Blues. The high point of the night was two songs with guest of honor (and then some): B.B. King.

The collaboration yielded what must rank as one of the greatest call and response sequences ever committed to tape, but to fully understand its power onstage, it's useful to look at the context offstage.

By the early '90s, Moore was thoroughly at home in the blues stage of his career – a move that had been signposted on his breakaway 1979 hit, Parisienne Walkways, and then finally embraced on his hugely successful 1990 LP, Still Got The Blues.

Following the album’s Platinum success, however, Moore had the creative (and commercial) license to embed himself fully in the music he loved most – and the confidence followed.

Many players would quake in the presence of King, but in the Live Blues footage, Moore is in his element, rampaging across the stage and locking eyes with the blues master with a grin on his face.

What’s more, he yields Greeny – the legendary Les Paul he inherited from Peter Green, notable for the reverse position of its neck humbucker – with a lightness of touch that puts him right at home next to King's instinctive, unconscious fretting.

At around 4:10, the two players begin to exchange ideas and stretch each other out, and it all builds over four minutes of unmissable playing into an astonishing call and response sequence. King's expressions say it all.

Some years down the line, Moore would tell the UK’s Planet Rock radio (via Far Out) that King's The Thrill Is Gone was one of his favorite tracks.

“I love sad love songs that are played in that kind of blues mode,” said Moore. “I've always liked it, going back to Peter Green and people like that. That minor-key thing to me in the blues and the guitar, they just go together so well, and he is a master of it.”

Of course, Moore himself has proven hugely influential on the likes of Kirk Hammett, Joe Bonamassa, and many other leading players, but given his shot to perform alongside his own hero, it’s fair to say Moore did one of his favorite songs justice. 

If this has left you inspired, why not take a look at this lesson on Moore’s signature guitar style? Or, you could go direct to the master himself and learn how to play like B.B. King.

A glittering list of blues rock guitarists – namely, Joe Bonamassa, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Carmen Vandenberg and Josh Smith – have teamed-up for a cover of B.B. King track Ain’t Nobody Home.

The song and accompanying in-studio video went live on Sunset Sound Recorders’ YouTube channel yesterday (June 8) in celebration of King’s 1972 session at the storied LA recording facility.

King’s original recording at the studio was released on the Live At Sunset Sound - Hollywood January, 10th 1972 album and now the four artists have paid tribute to the blues legend with their own take on the track – here interspliced with the set’s original intro.

Former Jeff Beck and current Bones UK guitarist Vandenberg gets the honor of the lead solo on the track, putting her Duesenberg through the wringer with a superbly off-kilter, almost-rockabilly take on the lead, before vocalist Taylor tags in with her Tele to nail the next section in a manner that is, frankly, unfairly off-the-cuff.

Later, things bounce back to Vandenberg who provides an invigorating fuzz-laden passage and then bats it to Bonamassa. The blues-rock ace responds with a solo that feels like more of a direct tribute to King’s fingertone.

From there, the lead guitar baton passes back to Taylor, then Vandenberg, before Bonamassa, Taylor, and you get the picture… essentially, it’s just a cycle of killer blues tag from that point out. 

Josh Smith, meanwhile, contents himself with ably holding down the (unbelievably tight) rhythm section alongside bassist Sean Hurley and drummer Lamar Carter. 

King’s original cut at the studio can be heard on the Live At Sunset Sound - Hollywood January, 10th 1972 vinyl reissue and while that session isn’t on YouTube, you can hear an earlier recording from the blues great below, for comparison.

Back on the new clip, guitar geeks will note that as with Bonamassa’s recent cover of Back In Black with Scary Pockets (another pro-packed, super-hi-fi session in a classic studio) – he’s once again favoring his Bigsby-equipped Gibson SG.

We still don’t know exactly what vintage that is, but let’s just assume it is worth more than your average suburban home and, therefore, is relishing the exercise.

While we’re on the blues ace’s guitar habit, Joe Bonamassa has been discussing what it’s like trying to live amongst “the sheer magnitude” of his 500-strong vintage guitar and amp collection at his LA home.

Not only was B.B. King one of most influential blues guitar players ever, he was also one of the most complementary guitarists on the circuit, regularly heaping praise on his peers after witnessing their electric guitar chops.

Playing in front of King would no doubt have been a daunting prospect, but the Lucille-wielding guitar master made sure to keep his contemporaries calm by lauding their six-string efforts and showering them with compliments whenever the chance arose.

Case in point was King’s performance with Grammy winner Bonnie Raitt, who left King in awe with a series of stunning slide solos at the House of Blues Chicago in 2004. King’s fondness for Raitt’s playing is well-documented, having once called her “the best damn slide player working today”.

That wasn’t the only time a slide player caught the attention of King, though. Back in 2012, King shared the stage with John Mayer, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks at the Hollywood Bowl, and ended up giving the latter the greatest compliment a guitarist could receive after marveling at his slide skills.

As the quartet jammed over King's 1972 cut Guess Who, Trucks took the opportunity to unleash his glass guitar slide upon the fretboard of his Gibson SG, turning in a supremely soulful solo that had everyone on stage in disbelief.

Though one clip predominantly focuses on Truck and Mayer – who shows his appreciation through a series of disbelieving waves and head shakes – King can be heard heaping on the praise, playfully telling Tedeschi, “I can see why you married him.”

The solo only lasts around 75 seconds, but that’s more than enough for King, who proceeds to tell Trucks, “That’s probably as good as I’ve ever heard.”

Now, King would have listened to an insurmountable amount of blues music throughout his life, so for Trucks to hear he’d just performed some of the best King had ever heard… well, we can’t think of higher praise.

It's no wonder King was left so stunned by Trucks' solo, given the slide master's impactful and purposeful approach to soloing.

In an interview with MusicRadar back in 2017, the Tedeschi Trucks Band founder discussed his approach to lead playing, which had been influenced by a quote from jazz drummer, Elvin Jones.

“He’d say, ‘When you’re playing and when you’re soloing, always tell a story,’” Trucks reflected. “You hear it in the great musicians, whether it’s a drummer or a horn player or a guitar player – you hear them take those breaths. You can feel that there’s something they’re trying to tell you.

“It’s emotion. It could be a literal story you have in mind that you could be telling, but it’s important that it’s not just a pile of things that you practice that you think are cool. You really should be trying to express something.”

B.B. King, a man who knew a thing or two about blues guitar playing, once said that – in his view – Bonnie Raitt was the “best damn slide player working today.”

It's an opinion few argued with at the time, and fewer still would take umbrage with today.

Raitt and King performed together on a number of occasions, one of which was the 2004 International Achievement Summit, which featured an evening concert at Chicago's House of Blues headlined – in celebration of his induction into the Academy of Achievement – by King.

Raitt performed first on her own, before teaming up with King for a spirited rendition of When Love Comes to Town, a song U2 recorded with King for their 1988 album, Rattle and Hum.

Prior to starting the song, Raitt hits King – much to his delight – with some absolutely searing unaccompanied slide licks. "She loves to mistreat me like that," King jokes with the crowd in response. "She knows I'm crazy about it!" 

You can see video of the performance – which begins with Raitt performing her song, Love Sneakin' Up on You on her own – below.

Armed with one of her signature Stratocasters, Raitt doesn't stop with just the unaccompanied intro. Indeed, King – playing "Lucille," his legendary Gibson ES-355 with no f-holes – seems more interested in listening to Raitt slide around the fretboard than in playing himself.

Though the cameras never get up close with Raitt, you can still get a great sense of her slide technique and how she – by wearing the guitar slide on her middle finger – switches seamlessly between rhythm and slide playing.

At various points, Raitt's slide work causes King to egg the crowd into cheering her on mid-solo, and even – at one amusing point – get up out of his chair and dance.

"I taught myself to play, so my hand positions aren’t 100 percent correct – and I put the bottleneck on the wrong finger,” Raitt told Guitar World of her unique slide technique in a 2022 interview.

“You can play more if you have it on your ring finger. Fred McDowell used his little finger, but by then I was already down the road with it on my middle finger. I heard Robert Johnson and just tried to make myself sound exactly like whatever he was doing.”

King wasn't the only electric guitar hero to be left slack-jawed by Raitt's slide work. In a 2022 interview, Raitt revealed that none other than Prince asked her to teach him her technique.

Joe Bonamassa has also sung Raitt's praises, naming her lead break on Thing Called Love (from Raitt's 1989 album, Nick of Time) as one of the 10 greatest blues-rock guitar solos of all time.

"She plays slide, and you know it’s Bonnie Raitt and you just go, ‘How do you do that with a Stratocaster and a glass slide?’" Bonamassa told Guitar World in 2019.

"It’s because she just has a way of phrasing and it’s in the DNA and it’s intrinsic."

Gibson has added to its ever-growing collection of B.B. King signature electric guitars by introducing a Custom Shop “Live at the Regal” Argentine Grey ES-335.

As the name suggests, the meticulously-crafted, Bigsby-equipped semi-hollow stunner is a recreation of the same ‘59 ES-335 model that King used back in November 1964, when he recorded one the most acclaimed and influential live blues albums of all time, Live at the Regal.

According to Gibson, on the night of Live at the Regal’s recording, King used a custom-ordered ES-335 model, which flashed an Argentine Grey sunburst finish, a Bigsby vibrato and, of course, King’s favored Varitone switch.

Only 100 Live at the Regal ES-335s will be made, with each mode receiving Gibson’s state-of-the-art Murphy Lab aging to tap into the same vintage aesthetic of King’s original ‘59 six-string.

In terms of specs, the six-string sports a three-ply maple/poplar/maple top, which is joined by back and sides of the same composition. A solid maple centerblock is housed within, and helps secure the two unpotted Custombucker pickups, ABR-1 bridge and '50s reissue Bigsby B7 tailpiece.

Joined to the body is an authentic ‘59 Medium C-shape profile neck, which in turn is topped with a 12”-radius, 22-fret, Nitrocellulose dot-inlayed Indian rosewood fingerboard.

Other notable appointments include an authentic ‘50s No-Tube truss rod, True Historic Gold Top Hat with Dial Pointer control knobs, and Grover Milk Bottle Rotomatic tuning machines.

It's the latest B.B. King signature guitar to emerge from the Gibson Custom Shop, following the release of a Transparent Ebony-finished Lucille Legacy model a year ago this month.

A few months after that, Epiphone dropped a Cherry-finished version of King's classic Lucille model.

The Live at the Regal ES-335 is available now for $9,999.

Head over to Gibson to find out more.

One of the most distinctive features of any electric guitar player is their vibrato. We’re dealing with finger vibrato rather than whammy bar, inspired by players such as Paul Kossoff, Peter Green, Stevie Ray Vaughan and B.B. King, whose vibratos differ greatly in terms of speed and depth.

In another case, that of Gary Moore, this can also stretch to how long you might sustain a note before introducing the vibrato gradually. As a starting point, I’m identifying some distinct elements of this technique that have been helpful to recognise over many years – and explaining them as coherently as I can! 

The permutations are obviously huge, but we can zone in on details such as raising a note momentarily sharp, then releasing it back to the original pitch, or partially releasing a string bend then returning it up to pitch in a ‘down-and-back’ pattern (think Peter Green). We can also combine both above and below the central pitch of a bend, like Paul Kossoff.

There are tell-tale hand positions that go with certain vibrato styles, so it’s worth searching out whatever video footage you can of players whose vibrato you admire. B.B. King and Eric Clapton favour lifting the fretting hand thumb away from the back of the neck and rocking the whole wrist and forearm to add vibrato to static (namely, not bent) notes.

For vibrato on string bends, there is a similar rocking motion but with the thumb anchored over the top of the fretboard. The fretting fingers remain locked in position, with the wrist and forearm muscles providing the movement – the same muscles we use when turning a key or opening a door.

To get the full effect of these examples, you’ll need to hear the audio in addition to the transcription here. Hope you enjoy these ideas and see you next time!

Example 1

This first example is inspired by Peter Green. A ‘down-and-back’ vibrato is generated by partially releasing a string bend then returning to the target pitch, which gives a very distinctive effect, which you’ll also hear in Gary Moore’s playing sometimes. 

This approach seems to be most effective when added to a pre-bent note. After holding still for a second, you can increase the vibrato gradually or dive straight in. These subtleties are what makes this technique so personal and distinctive.

Example 2

Adding vibrato to static (non-bent) notes like this means going slightly up in pitch then releasing to the original note. This can be done quickly or slowly according to taste, with B.B. King erring on the faster side and Eric Clapton slightly slower and more subtle. 

In both cases, the fretting hand thumb is lifted away from the back of the neck to allow the wrist and forearm to rock to and fro. The fretting fingers are kept relatively rigid.

Example 3

In this example, I'm adding vibrato to a string bend going above then returning to the target pitch in an ‘up-and-back’ pattern. It gives a different quality and emotional impact and was favoured very much by Gary Moore. 

The fretting hand thumb is clamped over the top of the neck to give leverage and the fingers are held pretty rigidly while the wrist and forearm adopt a rocking motion, similar to twisting a door knob. It is this that generates the vibrato, rather than the fingers themselves.

Example 4

Paul Kossoff and Angus Young have a very distinctive vibrato – which is very difficult to copy! In this example, I’ve tried to highlight how a wider ‘above and below’ vibrato can give us another option.

Different speeds will give different results, and it’s sometimes fun to go over the top then rein it back in for dramatic effect. Ideally, I would like to have wobbled that last note a bit wider and quicker, but you get the idea!

Example 5

This slower, wider vibrato is most distinctive on static notes, but as you’ll hear I’ve applied it to a bend near the end of the phrase. Jimi Hendrix, SRV and Zakk Wylde are great examples of players who employ what can be quite an aggressive-sounding vibrato.

Though the static notes limit us to ‘up-and-back’, I’ve gone a little above and below on the bends. The best way to assess how you’re doing with all this is to record yourself and listen back.

Hear it here

Peter Green – The Best of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac

Starting with Albatross, you can hear the rapid ‘down-and-back’ vibrato in Peter Green and Danny Kirwan’s super-accurate harmony guitars. It’s also on Black Magic Woman, but like many of the finer things in this world, it’s subtle, so listen closely.

Finally, you’ll hear it through the layers of guitars on The Green Manalishi, though some of the older tracks such as Stop Messin’ Round showcase a fine B.B. King-style vibrato, too.

Free – Fire and Water

It would be easiest just to cite every track on here, but some particular highlights are the title track, featuring almost endless sustain and vibrato. Also, check out Oh I Wept and Mr Big. 

As well as Paul Kossoff’s famous vibrato, there are some unusual and very effective chord voicings. It’s also quite educational to hear how much power and drama they were able to create with a bare minimum of overdubbing or effects from the recording studio.

Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble – Pride & Joy

Another case of being able to recommend the whole album: this posthumous release from 1990 pulls in material from a variety of sources, including live recordings.

At certain points you can hear SRV mixing and matching pretty much all the techniques we’ve looked at here; Texas Flood is a great example, as is You Better Leave My Gal Alone. Perhaps the ultimate display of his prowess is the blistering cover of Voodoo Chile.

The guitar player who influenced the greatest number of Chicago blues guitarists, though he got his start in Memphis, is B.B. King. 

By the early Fifties, B.B. had many records out, which were very accessible to everyone in Chicago, and during that time he played in the city a lot and had a big influence on other great players, such as Buddy Guy, Magic Sam and Otis Rush.

As a tribute to B.B., I’d like to dedicate this column to offering some examples of his signature licks and phrasing.

One particular earmark of B.B’s playing is something you’ll often hear in his song intros; a perfect example is the way in which he kicks off the blues classic, Sweet Little Angel, on Live at the Regal. 

Figure 1 is a phrase along the lines of this intro, in the key of A. Starting on the 5th, E, I move up to the 6th, F#, followed by the A root and the second, B, which I then bend up a whole step to the major 3rd, C#. The phrase then wraps up back on the 5th, E. Figure 2 places this intro within the context of a three-bar opening solo statement.

In Figure 3, I elaborate further by following that simple intro with more complex phrases in bars 2 and 3. These phrases fall between the 10th and 12th frets and represent what many refer to as the “B.B. box,” simply because licks and phrases like these are universally accepted as representative of B.B’s individual sound and style.

When I play phrases like these, I can’t help but remember how happy and excited I was when I first heard B.B. play. To this day, that great feeling inherent in his soloing still evokes pure happiness and joy. I can imagine a young Buddy Guy hearing this stuff on the radio and being fascinated and immediately hooked.

B.B. seemed to play with a rather light pick-hand touch. When I do this, I feel like my tone is better and clearer. I grew up playing a Stratocaster, so I had to do all I could to get a fatter sound to get closer to B.B.’s Gibson 335/345 sound.

Additionally, when you land on a note at the end of a phrase, add a nice big vibrato, striving to emulate the sound of the human voice. Vibrato seems to be something of a lost art, because all of the classic guitarists from the Fifties and Sixties that we love, such as B.B. King, Albert King, Albert Collins, Otis Rush, Eric Clapton, each had their own signature vibrato. A great vibrato will set you apart and let the listener instantly know who is playing.

In Figures 4 and 5, I apply these B.B.-isms to a moderate shuffle groove. Once you have these phrases down, try expanding upon them and inventing some twists and turns of your own. This is my last installment of Blues Truth for now. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed these columns as much as I have enjoyed putting them together. Be on the lookout for my forthcoming new album, Heartache by the Pound, and I’ll see you out on the road!

Last October, after months of speculation and teases, Epiphone finally unveiled a B.B. King signature Lucille model.

A lower-cost version of the Gibson Custom Shop Lucille electric guitar, the Epiphone is based on the blues guitar legend's beloved number one six-string of the same name. Originally available only in Ebony, the Epiphone Lucille has now been made available in Cherry and (for European customers only) Bone White colorways.

Other than in its looks, the Cherry/Bone White Lucille is identical to its Ebony-finished predecessor.

The guitar sports a five-ply maple/poplar ES-335 body with closed f-holes, a spec requested by the late King to prevent feedback. It has a rounded C-shaped maple neck with a 12”-radius, 24.75" ebony fingerboard boasting 22 medium jumbo frets and block pearloid inlays.

Sounds come by way of a pair of Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers, controlled by two volume and two tone knobs, and a retro six-position Varitone switch.

The Epiphone Lucille also features a couple of classy signature touches – a mother of pearl Lucille inlay on its ‘60s Kalamazoo headstock, and a brass truss rod cover engraved with King's name.

A TP-6 tailpiece, Grover Rotomatic tuners, a Graph Tech nut, dual 1/4" mono and stereo outputs, and gold-finished hardware complete the spec sheet.

The Epiphone B.B. King Lucille Cherry is available now for $949, the same price as its Ebony-finished sibling. The Bone White Lucille, meanwhile, rings up at £849/€949. Both new Lucilles come with an EpiLite case.

Its release coincides with that of Epiphone's new Matt Heafy MKH Les Paul Custom Origins Collection, which features 6- and 7-string models in right- and left-handed configurations, all featuring Fishman Fluence humbuckers.

For more info on the guitar, visit Epiphone.

“The show must go on.” That’s the maxim the musician lives by, no matter what slings and arrows of outrageous fortune come their way. 

This is one of the immutable tenets of performance ethics, contributing to the surely apocryphal tale of the Titanic’s band maintaining their jam during the most infamous maritime disaster of all time. It’s also one that animates the following guitar players to keep on playing when their strings break mid-song, reducing the six-string electric guitar to five – a situation that’d reduce lesser players to jelly.

There is a lot we can learn from watching these professionals deal with a string breakage, often with an air of casual defiance, as though they were Da Vinci swatting a fly from his brow before gamely putting the finishing touches to the Mona Lisa. 

Of course, we know that sometimes the show must not go on, and yet it just does, steamed by its own momentum. How many times have we stood there, riffing into the abyssal void of an empty provincial venue? Or when the crowd just look confused, and it’s only once the adrenaline has subsided that you realize you can’t hear the singer, the drums are mixed too low and you’ve missed a chorus?

Just like string breakages, these things just happen. But, even if you’ve got a Floyd Rose vibrato and a B string flapping in the breeze, the show must go on. With that in mind, here are 10 notable guitarists who kept their cool and kept on playing after snapping a string mid-song.

1. Stevie Ray Vaughan

If the American Film Institute treated YouTube footage of master guitarists playing on after a string breakage with the same reverence it reserves for the feature film, this would be talked about in the same breath as Citizen Kane.

Here, playing with Double Trouble at Austin City Limits, Stevie Ray Vaughan was just 34, and was at the height of his powers. In an all too short a time on this world, SRV was generous with his gifts. This performance of the Hank Ballard blues standard Look At Little Sister is worth studying on many levels. Perhaps the first lesson is on how to stitch together a 12-bar groove with a relaxed-fit pocket with room to swing, and how to assemble a formidable backing band and then get the best out of them.

The second, though, is all about delivering the solo, and continuing to deliver it once the string goes ‘pop’. Wait for the vest to swap out his ‘Number One’ Strat for ‘Scotch’. There is a lot of scuttlebutt with regards to SRV’s preferred string gauge. If you believe some, he used tow ropes for the wound strings. That would certainly allow him to dig in as he did.

2. John Frusciante  

We’ve all been there, right? Jamming with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers in Brazil on our 1960 Fender Telecaster Deluxe, and a string goes. You can’t blame it. Its tensile fortitude had been tested to the limit and beyond by a particularly fevered performance of If You Have To Ask from the Chilis’ 1991 tour de force Blood Sugar Sex Magik – the solo of which is one of Frusciante’s most freaky-deaky.

If the stage-lights hadn’t got this gossamer strand of silver blowing in the wind, no one – perhaps not even Flea, who’s directing traffic in this jam – would have noticed, with Frusciante digging into the elasticity of his right wrist to keep the funk going. It’s funny, because on the record, Frusciante receives a round of applause from those in the studio when he finishes his solo. It’s like they knew… 

3. Slash 

One of the reasons Slash’s guitar playing is always worthy of deeper study is the dichotomy between his deft use of the harmonic minor scale and its melodic grandeur to complement the pentatonic bread-and-butter, and the fact that he has a quasi-bestial playing style. It’s like Dr. Jekyll picks the notes and Mr. Hyde plays them.

The man attacks the strings. Little wonder Ernie Ball used Slash as a test pilot to demonstrate just how tough their Paradigm sets are – Ernie Ball claims its RPS (Reinforced Plain String) technology improves tensile strength by up to 35 per cent, with fatigue strength up 70 per cent.

In this fan-filmed performance of Anastasia – the centerpiece of his 2012 album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, Apocalyptic Love – Slash is tearing it up through the solo before the B string goes bye-bye. Which, frankly, begs the question: if you were to lose a string mid-performance, which would you want it to be? 

Either way, Slash is totally unperturbed. He knows his style, his gear. Those purple Tortex 1.14 mm guitar picks he prefers have very little flex, even when you’re playing a set of 11s. In other words, he knows the risks. They have been priced in. And even when things go south, you can’t let it take you out of the moment. Though, we’d wager it is on occasions such as this that Slash was more than happy he didn’t go down the Floyd Rose route like so many of his peers.

4. B.B. King  

Some might have worried that B.B. King would be out of his element when he took to the stage at Farm Aid – that the wide open spaces and bright afternoon light of the Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois, were too expansive for the King of the Blues to seat 80,000 people in the palm of his hand. But just so long as there was a stage, B.B. King was all right.

Organized by John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson and Neil Young, this star-studded fundraiser must have drawn a high proportion of its audience from the agricultural community, and the cucumber growers among them would have recognized a whole new level of cool when King broke a string during a feisty rendition of How Blue Can You Get?, not taking a moment’s pause, and restringing Lucille while putting heart, lungs and soul into the vocals.

We know King was a stickler for intonation, with the fine-tuning TP-6 tailpiece one of the things that distinguishes Lucille from a garden-variety ES-345. Indeed, an unprintable curse word might have entered his head. But onstage, all that mattered was the song, the audience, the show. Total pro. 

5. Tommy Emmanuel  

If you are performing an unaccompanied rock ’n’ roll boogie on an acoustic guitar at a hazardous tempo – a performance so out-there in the scale of its virtuosity that we’re glad there was video to prove it was one player – and you do it all without breaking a string? Well, did you even perform such a piece.

Here, Australian acoustic maestro Tommy Emmanuel breaks a string and carries on, and that is why this performance is on this list. But this footage is more than just documented proof of Emmanuel’s god-like credentials; it’s that sort of humbling-yet-inspiring wizardry that makes people want to pick up the instrument in the first place.

And all of us who have done so already... well, it’s time to revisit the guitar and ask of ourselves; how can our technique and improvisational brio produce an étude such as this? Chet Atkins would have looked on with pride.

6. Mark Tremonti  

No-one will ever or has ever questioned the physical condition of Mark Tremonti. He is the one player you do not want to go circuit training with. That goes double when it comes to exchanging lead guitar lines. Who among us would not wither like a dandelion stewing in weed control at the prospect?

But such physical condition comes with a health warning for guitar strings, and on this occasion – as Alter Bridge took to the stage at the Baltimore Soundstage, Maryland – Mr. T leaned into the rhythm figure for Cauterize and opened up a can of whoop-ass on the E string.

As the other Mr. T might say, “To have a comeback, you have to have a setback.” Well, luckily a tech was on hand with another PRS solidbody Singlecut to see the song through. Tremonti never missed a beat.

7. Eric Clapton  

Here is some documentary footage of ecclesiastical importance, proving that Eric Patrick Clapton is not God. That’s right: if he really was God, do you think he would be standing onstage at Knebworth putting his Fender Stratocaster through the mill, only for a string to break? 

Surely, fellow six-string theologians, this is incontrovertible proof that Clapton puts one leg of his pink suit trousers on at a time like the rest of us. Or, is this just the sort of thing that God would want us to think. Why set a bush aflame or send Gabriel with a message when a little diversion could be just as effective? 

Whatever the divine provenance or otherwise of Mr. Slowhand, you have to admit that Clapton epitomizes cool here in this performance of Before You Accuse Me. 

You can just picture the scene, side of stage:

Satan (laughing): “Broken string, Mr Clapton? Do you want to have a cry?”

Clapton (hair flowing in the breeze, tastefully hirsute, definitely owns a sports-car): “Get behind me, Satan! I licked you at the Crossroads, mate, and I’m gonna lick you now. You got that!? I’m onstage at Knebworth, wearing a pink suit, with Lace Sensor single-coils in my Strat – ‘cos its 1990 and that’s still legit. This is still a free country, mate!”  

8. Buddy Guy  

Sometimes it’s happenstance that makes a performance great. That’s especially true of playing the blues – an art form that has parallels with stand-up comedy. The storytelling discipline and crowd management requires a similar temperament, the likes of which blues great and master showman Buddy Guy has in spades. 

This performance from 2010’s Crossroads Festival – since released as a concert LP and film – has an end-of-semester feel, the promise of an endless summer. Everyone played this show. But even as proceedings ease into a casual jam on the Stones classic Miss You, with Ronnie Wood and Johnny Lang as wingmen, Guy is always switched on.

When his string breakage interrupts his part and Wood steps in to offer him his Strat, Guy has that look in his eyes; it’s time to style it out and have a little fun with the crowd. “I broke my guitar string, I’m going to keep on trying to play…” His polka-dot signature Strat gets prepared, but all in good time. String breakage? Don’t let it give you the blues. Turn it into the blues. 

9. Ed Sheeran 

With his Chewie II loop station on hand, there are few players in the world more prepared for a string breakage than Ed Sheeran.

It’s a creative tool, of course – the looper building layers of accompaniment, with one of the world’s highest-grossing musicians ostensibly using a beefed-up busker’s rig – but it also serves as a technological prophylactic. Handy when you’re strumming the bejeezus out of a capo’d small-bodied acoustic guitar during the helter-skelter folk-pop of You Need Me, I Don't Need You... something could go.

And it does. The G string succumbs. The loop pedal hangs in there. Another five strings keep the layers going and Sheeran’s vocal delivery puts on a display of alphabet aerobics that’d see a veteran cattle auctioneer pull up injured with a twisted tongue. That’s showbiz.

10. Steve Vai 

Steve Vai’s DIY DNA has stood him in good stead over the years, and its reframing of challenges – physically, creatively and otherwise – as opportunities typically leads to him doing something pretty special, and more often than not something that no-one else has ever done before. 

Recent examples include Knappsack, from his latest album, Inviolate, quite possibly the most Steve Vai album ever recorded. With his arm in a sling, he wrote and performed a track using just his fretting hand, making full use of his Jedi legato training.

But what makes Vai more vulnerable to string breakages than anyone else on this list is that double-locking vibrato. As we all know, a breakage on a Floyd is panic stations for your tuning as the unit is off-balance.

Vai loses his top string, the least problematic, and yet to adapt the solo to The Crying Machine with intonation on-point is genius at work. When he gets the chance to switch JEMs, it’s like a video-game power-up has come online to see him through to the end, triumphant and divine.

I recently read an online article that described B.B. King’s tone as “warm and mellow”. To me, that was the equivalent of saying Eddie Van Halen played great power chords, as it only tells a very small fraction of the story and almost completely ignores the more important details.

Yes, B.B. King’s tone could sometimes be “warm” and “mellow”, but more often it was bright, brilliant, aggressive, percussive, voice-like, honking and dynamic. For example, listen to any version of King’s best-known song, The Thrill Is Gone – warm and mellow are probably the last adjectives that come to mind when one hears his punchy, metallic, biting tone.

Many blues guitar fans consider the version of The Thrill Is Gone that King recorded September 10, 1970, at Cook County Jail in Chicago as one of his best performances of the song. 

The rig King used at that gig consisted of a mid-'60s Gibson ES-355TD-SV with a stereo Varitone circuit and Maestro Vibrola tailpiece (with the vibrato arm removed) and a Gibson LP-1 Les Paul preamp head with an LP-2 power amp/speaker cabinet – an all-solid state amp made for Gibson at the Standel factory in El Monte, California.

Previously, King was seen using Fender tube amps, but once he started using Gibson solid-state amps, they became his favored choice, as he progressed to Gibson’s tube/solid state hybrid SG Systems amps (also produced by Standel) next before settling upon his all-time favorite, the Gibson-produced Lab Series L-5 solid state combo.

King needed ample volume to perform onstage with as much clean headroom as possible, which is why he preferred solid-state amps. He also liked the quick, percussive attack and the cut of the treble frequencies.

King also made very effective use of his Gibson 355’s Varitone circuit, particularly on this song. Here he used the #2 setting with both pickups engaged. He plugged the guitar in the amp using a stereo Y cord, which sent the signal from each pickup to a separate channel. King was a master of dialing in different tones and textures by adjusting the guitar’s volume and tone controls in conjunction with various Varitone settings.

Another important element of King’s tone is his impeccable phrasing, particularly his forceful attack employing a heavy pick and hummingbird-like left hand vibrato. As Billy Gibbons has often mentioned, King also used lighter-gauge strings than most of his contemporaries, preferring .009s for his high E string throughout the '70s and '80s, although he later switched to .010s with heavy bottom strings.

Get the sound, cheap!

Epiphone B.B. King Lucille

Fender Champion 100 2x12

Tone Tip: Use both pickups and the #2 Varitone setting on the Lucille guitar just like B.B. did, and dial back the amp’s bass to emphasize midrange honk and treble cut.