Results for "B.B. King"

B.B. King

“King of the Blues” Born on a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi in 1925, Riley B. King would start from very humble beginnings. His family moved around the area, and the young Riley experienced early a life of constant motion. As a youngster he was a farm laborer, but drawn to music, he took up the guitar; he played on street corners, and would sometimes play in as many as four towns a night. In 1946, he hitchhiked to Memphis, to pursue his music career. Memphis was a large musical community where every style of music could be found, a good place for a young man who wanted to play the blues

B.B. King: Through the Years

By ALAN BRYSON

Sixty-six years passed from the time in 1948 when Riley King auditioned for a spot on Sonny Boy Williamson's radio program, until his final performance at the House of Blues on October 3, 2014 in Chicago. His life was a remarkable odyssey from a sharecropper's cabin to the pinnacle of success. We'll never know how many ...

Top Ten Horizontal Guitar Players

By ALAN BRYSON

Who could have imagined that a few serendipitous events on a remote Pacific island in the 19th century would fundamentally change American music. In 1832 Hawaii's king brought Mexican cowboys to the Big Island to teach native Hawaiians how gain control of their rapidly increasing cattle population. As luck would have it, some of these cowboys ...

Cotton Pickin' Blues

By MARTIN MCFIE

Blues began with enslaved African peoples' work songs in the cotton fields of the Deep South of America. The Slave Narrative of Mr. Sam Polite, given at 93 years of age, chronicles that life. It was written on St. Helena, a cotton producing Sea Island in the Carolinas, where Mr. Polite was born into slavery. The ...

Guitar King: Michael Bloomfield's Life in the Blues

By DOUG COLLETTE

Guitar King: Michael Bloomfield's Life in the Blues David Dann 776 Pages ISBN: #978-1477318775 University of Texas Press 2019 Through a combination of journalistic objectivity, scholarly attention to detail and the passion of a fan, author David Dann accomplishes exactly what he professes to achieve in his 'Prologue' to ...

Vic Juris: Tension and Release

By VICTOR L. SCHERMER

This article was first published at All About Jazz on July 28, 2009. Vic Juris is one of the premier jazz guitarists in the business today. Perhaps less known than some of his peers, he is nevertheless admired by all of them and has accumulated, since his emergence on the scene in the 1970s, ...

ZZ Top and Cheap Trick with special guest Marquise Knox at the Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater

By MIKE PERCIACCANTE

ZZ Top and Cheap Trick with special guest Marquise Knox The Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater 50th Anniversary Tour Wantagh, NY September 19, 2019 When the Little Ol' Band From Texas, Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Famers, ZZ Top tours, fans can expect a night of fun featuring blues, ...

Woodstock—Back to the Garden: 50th Anniversary Experience

By JOHN KELMAN

First things first. For all but the most committed of fans, knowledge of what transpired, how it transpired and when it transpired at the now-legendary 1969 Woodstock Music & Arts Fair has, despite a variety of initial, 25th and 40th Anniversary audio and video releases, been severely limited. As engaging, entertaining and well-constructed as these various ...

Grover Washington Jr.: Sacred Kind of Love: The Columbia Recordings

By JAKOB BAEKGAARD

When saxophonist and composer Grover Washington Jr. (1943-1999) arrived at Columbia in 1986, he was already a fully formed artist. He had released a string of strong albums and had even landed a regular smash-hit with “Just the Two Us," his collaboration with singer Bill Withers. In other words, Washington had nothing to prove and could ...

Various Artists: Confessin' The Blues

By DOUG COLLETTE

If it weren't so scrupulously annotated (at least up to a point) or attractively designed, this title might be flippantly described as “The Greatest Hits of the Blues." As is, it is the third in a roots revival series of sorts. Confessin' The Blues follows Chicago Plays the Stones (Raisin' Music, 2018), where a Windy city ...