Music world mourns blues legend B.B. King

NEW YORK: Blues legend B.B. King, whose crisp but powerful guitar licks ranked him among the instrument’s greatest masters, has died at 89, his daughter said early Friday.
King, a towering influence over generations of musicians, still maintained a touring schedule that put to shame much younger artists until late last year when his health declined.
Daughter Patty King confirmed to CNN that the guitar master died Thursday night.
He had issued a final statement on May 1 saying that he was entering hospice care at his home in Las Vegas.
News of King’s death elicited tributes from musicians across genres who credited the guitarist as a major force in the direction of 20th-century music.
“BB, anyone could play a thousand notes and never say what you said in one. #RIP,” a much younger star guitarist and singer, Lenny Kravitz, wrote on Twitter.
The Canadian singer Bryan Adams tweeted: “RIP BB King, one of the best blues guitarists ever, maybe the best. He could do more on one note than anyone.”
Despite his fame, King was frequently remembered for his warm and hospitable personality.
Jon Brewer, the director of a 2012 documentary on King narrated by Morgan Freeman, said that he learned “so much of his kindness, generosity and sincerity as a human being” when making the film.
“His passing is truly a great loss for the music industry,” he said in a statement.
Born in poverty in Mississippi as Riley B. King, the future legend learned to play a guitar that was given to him at age 12 by a plantation owner.
King later christened his trusty guitar Lucille — a reference to a brawl over a woman between two men that set off a fire though which King rushed to save his instrument.
King helped shape the modern blues — a narrative-driven, often melancholy genre, with roots in African American spirituals, that emerged fully during emancipation from slavery.
But King also managed to bring the blues to a white and international audience, setting in motion the direction of rock.
He was invited in 1968 to perform at San Francisco’s Fillmore West, a haven for hippies, and a year later reached a wider audience when he opened 18 US concerts for the Rolling Stones.
King’s signature song was “The Thrill is Gone” — full of the feelings of angst so often identified with the blues, interspersed with biting guitar licks.
In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him the third greatest guitar legend, after Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman and just ahead of Eric Clapton.
King developed his distinct style in the 1950s as he toured incessantly with his band. A natural entertainer on stage, he wove stories from the poor south with tales and jokes from his often colorful love life.
His guitar playing focused not on speed or on sweeping chords but instead on well-chosen, sharp single notes.
He never took up the slide guitar like most Delta bluesmen, but substituted with a vibrato.
King in his prime put in more than 300 concerts a year, despite suffering Type II diabetes for the past two decades.
But fans noticed that his recent performances became increasingly erratic and he finally stopped touring after falling ill at a show in Chicago in October.
“I have a disease which I believe might be contagious,” he told AFP in an interview in 2007. “It’s called ‘need more.’”
But another reason King stayed on the road was in hopes of keeping the blues alive.
“With the exception of satellite radio today I don’t hear no blues playing on the radio,” he told AFP. “So one of the reasons I travel a lot is so I can carry the music to the people. Because if I don’t carry it, it don’t go on the air.”
Nonetheless, he was cited as an influence by a who’s who of musical greats including Clapton, who recorded the 2000 album “Riding With the King” with him.
The album won a Grammy, one of 15 racked up by King during his career.
Other famous collaborations included the song “When Love Comes to Town” with U2.
Despite King’s decades of recognition, his final days were clouded by unseemly scenes amid an apparent dispute between his family and manager over his care.