It took a year of living in the dorms at South Alabama to spark my interest in playing guitar. Six-strings were everywhere on the floor, and there were plenty of pot head troubadours roaming the halls willing to share what they knew. Looking back, that was probably some of the best musical training available. A number of those guys were music majors. All of them had been strumming away probably before they could walk. They taught me all I was willing to absorb, from tuning and scales to blues progressions and fingering techniques.
Now, I'm not a blues man. It's not that I don't appreciate the sheer talent of the genre's proponents, but the intricate musical innuendo is lost on me - kinda like giving a frat boy a bottle 18 year old Oban single malt. That being said, I do have some albums of this uniquely American musical style, and the bulk of my collection centers around B.B. King.
I'm proud to call Riley B. King a native son of my adopted home state of Mississippi. King was born on September 26, 1925 in the Mississippi Delta town of Berclair. Despite sounding cliche, he was the son of sharecroppers.
King's earliest musical influences were the gospel choir of his home church and another local minister who taught him his first guitar chords. This was the dawn of a career that spanned more than 65 years. In that stretch of time, the man amassed 21 Grammy nominations and won 15 of them. This was punctuated by his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
We said farewell to B.B. King, the last of the Delta bluesmen, and his beloved Lucille earlier this year on May 14. He was 89. Today's selection is another of my "front porch sitting, sunset watching, stiff drink sipping" songs. In it King talks about his history with Lucille. Just let it wash over you.
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