T/S - BB King v. Albert King

Tossup.

I wish I had seen Albert.

I could never chose between the two. It's just two hard. Sometimes I'm in an Albert mood, sometimes I'm in a BB mood. Between the two, I probably own about 60 records.

http://cover6.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/110/116448.jpg

I wholeheartedly subscribe to the theory that good blues lead playing is incredibly difficult. Sure, everyone can noodle in a minor pentatonic, lapse into some major licks and bend strings like said blues guitar heroes, but they invariably don't have the dirt, fire and sass of a true blues lead guitar player.

It's sort of a zen proposition. Learn all the licks in this incredibly limiting box pattern, develop an original tone (which probably can't be done anymore) and impart yourself in those notes, impart your true feeling and soul. Who does that anymore, without sounding canned or overproduced or soulless?

I'd hazard to say the last of the great blues guitar records were in the 70s: Freddie and Albert were on fire, BB was obviously stuck on replay. You had Otis Rush, Son Seals and Fenton Robinson on fire in the mid-70s. What's happened since then that can possibly compare?

So I think I know what you're saying, I just think if those guys did that one thing, that good thing that's so fucking limited, really well, then kudos. Because no one has done it really well since without copping from the source.

OK, maybe Ronnie Earl on occasion. I have a soft spot for his playing.

Not choosing, but I was just looking for a thread to say I'm listening to Born Under a Bad Sign and it's pretty great.

I've seen BB several times, and it was always a shuck, fuck him.

hahahah is this guy serious

I love Albert but this is BB easy. BB is still surprising me.

i never really understood why BB King is so deified over many other better blues players, he's kinda boring to me.

i love them both equally.

For me it's as much about his singing as his playing. On his best stuff (and sure, he's made boring records) his voice is impassioned and breaks in all the right places, while the guitar is supremely UNDERplayed, never wasting a note, pleading and stinging just where it needs to. Tough to explain, but:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XclubtGRkQ

and the underplaying is more striking because his sound is so identifiable: i guess it makes me surprised that someone could own such a unique sound with so little playing.

BB King, because any song that begins "I been downhearted baby, ever since the day we met" is an instant classic.

I seriously though want to build a time machine and murder the Primitive Radio Gods prior to them recording that shitty Change in the Phone Booth song

The more I listen to the blues the more I realize I don't like bb king very much.

Wow...I can't go there.

BB King was more downtown sounding than most of his peers as his back line always had a horn section. The guy has also been there since the beginning of electric blues. The guy is one of the seminal blues men. Stax signing Albert King and putting the MGs and the Memphis Horns behind him is pretty much trying to emulate the popular sound/success of BB's band.

Can't go wrong with any of the three Kings, they were all fantastic. BB is the better singer. Freddie was a more acrobatic guitarist than either of them. Albert's lead playing and some of his tunes directly influenced some of the blues rock of the late 60s.

Or you can just choose Albert King as he is the only one that I know Danzig ever covered.