Thoughts on BB
I wrote this on BB King on his passing and only posted to Facebook at the time: I think his childhood traumas (death of his matriarchs, violence of his patriarch) mimicked those African-American culture as a whole pre-Civil Rights; his sound and look were always with the utmost of dignity and graciousness and deep feeling together as a result. He also continued to educate himself, practicing guitar scales and learning different spoken languages until well after he had to do those things. His autobiography is unflichingly honest but also unflinchingly humble. His originality came in part from his limitations: he famously couldn't play slide like his uncle Booker White or chord like T-Bone Walker, so he developed his own style, in part from trying to make his guitar sound like a horn. His vocals, often overlooked, come straight out of the Gospel music tradition and his guitar is so powerful because it responds to each vocal line. Later, he recognized that he was an ambassador of the ...
