{"id":1919,"date":"2011-11-22T16:00:43","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T21:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/?p=1919"},"modified":"2011-11-22T16:00:43","modified_gmt":"2011-11-22T21:00:43","slug":"b-b-king-and-lucille","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/b-b-king-and-lucille\/","title":{"rendered":"B.B. King and Lucille"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
B.B. King with his guitar, Lucille. From Wikipedia.org<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

B.B. King has touched the hearts of music fans all over the world, including my own.\u00a0 I found a gem while I was cruising YouTube and wanted to share it with you.\u00a0 It’s the story of how Lucille, B.B. King’s famous guitar, got her name.\u00a0 You may have heard the story before, but I really enjoyed hearing Mr. King tell it himself.\u00a0 Then I found a feature that Gibson Lifestyle put out about the relationship between B.B. King and Lucille over the many years of their career together.\u00a0 I hope you dig it as much as I did.\u00a0 Enjoy!<\/p>\n

I found the video of B.B. King telling the story about Lucille here at http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EGsvAMRFivo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[youtube_sc url=”http:\/\/youtu.be\/EGsvAMRFivo” width=”420″ rel=”0″]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was so interested in the story, I dug a little bit more to find this great feature on the famous blues pair by Gibson Lifestyle at http:\/\/www.gibson.com\/en-us\/Lifestyle\/Features\/bb-king-0916\/<\/a>.\u00a0 Plus there’s a cool video performance that includes musicians: B.B. King on guitar, Sonny Freeman on drums, James Toney on organ, Mose Thomas on trumpet, and Lee Gatling on sax.<\/p>\n

Perhaps no other musical partnership has a history as long as that of the blues legend B.B. King and his beloved guitar named \u201cLucille.\u201d Today the Gibson B.B. King Lucille model is a gorgeous ebony queen with gold hardware bearing King\u2019s name on its headstock. But over the years there have been many Lucilles, including an actual woman whose name King took for his guitar.<\/p>\n

[youtube_sc url=”http:\/\/youtu.be\/O5URVbh3KX8″ width=”420″ rel=”0″]<\/p>\n

The Lucille saga begins with her in the winter of 1949, when King \u2013 who turns 85 on today \u2013 was playing a Twist, Arkansas dance. A fight broke out and the burning barrel of kerosene that was used to heat the room spilled, spreading its flaming contents. Panic ensued as the fire began to cover the floor. Everybody, including King, fled. Once outside, he realized he\u2019d left his prized guitar, a $30 Gibson acoustic, and returned to retrieve it.<\/p>\n

The next day King learned two people had died in the blaze, and that the fight triggering the conflagration was over a woman named Lucille. He renamed his Gibson after her that day, as a reminder to never do anything as stupid as fight over a woman or enter a burning building again.<\/p>\n

King switched to electric guitar and began his recording career that same year, cutting his first single \u201cMiss Martha King\u201d for Nashville-based Bullet Records. At that point, he played another solid body electric, but by the early \u201950s he was a Gibson man for life. During that era he was photographed with a Les Paul Gold Top and a hollowbody Gibson L-5CES, and when semi-hollowbody Gibson guitars hit the market, he switched to those to achieve greater volume at the fore of his orchestra.<\/p>\n

He made his way through the Gibson \u201cES\u201d family, traveling and recording with a series of ES-335s, ES-345s and finally ES-355s until 1980. King began using the ES-355 as soon as it was introduced in 1958. With its bold block neck inlays, gold hardware, split diamond headstock emblem and ample binding, the model remains the Cadillac of the ES series. In 1980, just before the regular production of ES-355s ceased, the first Gibson Lucille Model was built.<\/p>\n

The Lucille has evolved over the years, but the first-generation models were drawn right from the ES-355TD template \u2013 with the \u201cT\u201d standing for \u201cthinline\u201d and the \u201cD\u201d for dual pickups. The guitar also sported both stereo and mono output jacks \u2013 the better for King to achieve his thick, buttery tone. With its six-position Varitone rotary dial prominently displayed on its body, the Lucille, and ES-355s with the Varitone option, for that matter, may resemble the ES-345, but there are important differences. The Lucille has a maple rather than mahogany neck for a brighter tone and there are no f-holes, which makes the guitar better suited for higher volumes. Initially, Gibson also made Lucille in cherry red. The one notable exception from the contemporary model\u2019s ebony finish is Joe Perry\u2019s \u201cBille\u201d one-off Lucille variant \u2013 named after his wife \u2013 that was made in white especially for him by the Gibson Custom Shop.<\/p>\n

Today there are two B.B. King Lucille models in production. The Gibson Custom Shop makes the flagship version, with a gleaming ebony finish, gold hardware, block inlays, stereo and mono output jacks, sumptuous binding and \u201cB.B. King\u201d set ornately into the headstock over a curlicue inlay and beneath a pearloid crown. There\u2019s also an Epiphone B.B. King Lucille, with a more modest headstock bearing only the names \u201cLucille\u201d and \u201cEpiphone,\u201d and a fine-tuning tailpiece.<\/p>\n

Along with King\u2019s birthday and the 30th<\/sup> anniversary of the Lucille model, there\u2019s one more historic event in King\u2019s career to celebrate. The album that many believe to be King\u2019s finest, Live at the Regal<\/em>, was released 45 years ago, in November 1965. Recorded the year before at Chicago\u2019s Regal Theater, where King was a regular and a local hero, it is one of the greatest live albums ever cut, if only for the way it captures the loud and relentless magnetic connection of the audience and their beloved performer.<\/p>\n

At times the screaming threatens to overwhelm the performances of such great entries in the King repertoire as Memphis Slim\u2019s \u201cEveryday I Have the Blues,\u201d Robert Nighthawk\u2019s \u201cSweet Angel,\u201d Leonard Feather\u2019s \u201cHow Blue Can You Get?\u201d the early King hits \u201cPlease Love Me\u201d and \u201cYou Upset Me Baby\u201d plus the tongue-in-cheek \u201cHelp the Poor.\u201d The disc captures King as a vital pup of just 40 years, at the height of his stunning vocal and guitar powers, with a Gibson ES-355 named Lucille tucked under his arm. And the album remains a touchstone for anybody interested in understanding what the magic of live blues is all about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

B.B. King and Lucille are blues legends and I encourage you to spend as much time as you can studying them.\u00a0 I know I have.<\/p>\n

Thanks,<\/p>\n

Griff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

B.B. King has touched the hearts of music fans all over the world, including my own.\u00a0 I found a gem while I was cruising YouTube and wanted to share it with you.\u00a0 It’s the story of how Lucille, B.B. King’s famous guitar, got her name.\u00a0 You may have heard the story before, but I really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}