King of the Blues by Daniel De. Vise

Author:Daniel De. Vise [Vise, Daniel De.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611856545
Google: lLgszgEACAAJ
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated
Published: 2021-10-15T23:40:41.390520+00:00

CHAPTER 14

MYTHOLOGY

B.B. HAD RECEIVED STANDING OVATIONS before in his forty-one years, but always at the end of a performance, never the beginning. Now he stood on the Fillmore stage, tears streaming down his cheeks, facing a kaleidoscope army of hippies whose cheers rang louder than any of the music that would fill the hall that Sunday.

Carlos Santana, the guitarist from Tijuana, stood in the audience and beheld his hero through the smoky glare. “The light was hitting him in such a way that all I could see were big tears coming out of his eyes, shining on his black skin,” Santana recalled. “He raised his hand to wipe his eyes, and I saw he was wearing a big ring on his finger that spelled out his name in diamonds. That’s what I remember most—diamonds and tears, sparkling together.”

B.B. had feared this audience would give him nothing. Instead, the fans were giving him everything. He wondered how he could possibly answer such an outpouring. He led the band into “Every Day I Have the Blues.” The answer would come in his music.

“I played that night like I’ve never played before,” B.B. recalled. He fed on the energy of his audience, an interaction not unlike the feedback loop between guitar and amplifier that provided Lucille her signature sound. B.B. had been allotted forty-five minutes but played for nearly an hour and a half. All the while, the audience remained on its feet, dancing and leaping, screaming and clapping, frigging, fragging, and frugging. The cheering never really stopped.

“It was hard for me to believe that this was happening,” B.B. recalled, “that this communication between me and the flower children was so tight and right.”

Peter Lewis, the Moby Grape guitarist, watched from the wings. “The kids were tripping out under these strobe lights,” he recalled. “And he’s playing blues like he’s in a smoky bar. He fit. That’s what I remember about that night. He fit. He was perfect.”

B.B.’s jaded sidemen never paused to appraise the moment. To them, the Fillmore was one more stop on an unending tour, much like that chilly night at the Regal back in 1964. “I guess for most of us in the band, it was just another gig,” recalled Duke Jethro, the organist. “Except that the audience was different. I remember psychedelic lights and all that. I wasn’t paying attention to a lot, except girls.”

Nonetheless, when the pot smoke had cleared, B.B. King stood revealed as the greatest blues musician of his time. Perhaps the hippies hadn’t recognized him as he stumbled through the crowd, searching for the refuge of a dressing room and a bottle of scotch. But they recognized his sound, for it was the sound of Eric Clapton and Mike Bloomfield, their rock-guitar idols. And they recognized his name, a name B.B.’s white acolytes had been chanting in San Francisco and Los Angeles and London. That Sunday night, B.B. bade farewell to the chitlin’ circuit, vacating the fringe genre of blues to join the mostly white and male fraternity of rock music.

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