Now we love this facebook page Don Tune’s [Don Draper that is! I so want it to be John Hamm but we will make do with his character shout out from TV series Mad Men] and you can always rely on Don to post a humdinger of some tunes and research resources!
This one is no exception - read this!
B.B. King working on his album 'B.B. King In London', June 1971.
B.B King: “We asked for some British musicians to sit in with us. There was Peter Green and a whole lot of people. When we heard from Ringo, I said, ‘Oh yes, please… The Beatles.’”Pete Wingfield (keyboards, Jellybread): “I was 23 when we did the In London session, so still a relatively callow youth. Mike Vernon rang me the night before and asked if I could get along to Command Studios for a BB King session. Mike suggested it might be a good idea to cobble a song together so, with the brazenness of relative youth, that’s what I did. I wrote Power Of The Blues specially for that session, wrote it overnight. Started with the title and went from there. I custom-made it to the max to be suitable for BB King. For example, even then he had a reputation of being something of a road warrior, on the road 300 days a year, so that was what I built the lyric around, and a mention of Lucille, which was his guitar.“I didn’t have time to do a demo, I just had the lyric scribbled on a bit of paper, plonked it in front of B, and he was the most amenable of gentlemen. I think he appreciated someone having an idea rather than just waiting to be told what to do. He was completely open to it and happy to fit in with my idea of how to do it.”Paul Butler (guitarist, Jellybread): “Like Pete, I was called up the night before, and it wasn’t until I got to Command Studios that I even knew it was a BB King session. I was wearing a shirt in which I used to play rugby when I was 14, but B was wearing a jacket and tie, very old- school, very smart.“B was just a lovely, lovely guy, but he was also absolutely switched on to the music. I’ve backed a lot of people, Lightnin’ Slim, Eddie ‘Guitar’ Burns, and they would change chords whenever they felt like it, which is fine if you’re playing solo but, in a band, everybody has to know what’s happening. Technically, BB’s music was much sharper and you realised that you had to know what you were doing. I think he knew, though, as soon as we started to play, that we’d be good working with him.“When you play on a BB King album, he’s the man and you’re there to back him, make him sound as good as he can. The first thing we did was called something like Getting To Know You, and it was basically just a jam. It didn’t get onto the album. I think we did three or four tracks all told that day. It was a one-day session, but quite a long day. I remember Jeremy Spencer [Fleetwood Mac] was there that day, but he didn’t play.”Dave Chapman: “BB was not only supremely talented, he was also perhaps the nicest person I met in my 25 years in the music business. I remember one day the weather was dreadful, a force-eight gale, rain hammering down. My secretary, Denise, had an umbrella so she offered to walk BB from the studio to the Dorchester Hotel, where he was staying. As they walked along the umbrella started to leak and they both got absolutely soaked by the time they reached the hotel, which BB just thought was very funny. Several months later, when the album came out, there was a note on the cover saying, ‘Thanks to Denise with the leaky umbrella’. That was typical of BB. He never forgot anybody. It absolutely made her day.”Command was conveniently located for the ABC-Dunhill off ices, but the lion’s share of the sessions took place at Olympic Studios, where Alexis Korner, one of the godfathers of British blues, proved to be an important contributor to the proceedings.BB King: “There was a guy from England called Alexis Korner. He was a good player. He told me he had learned to play from a fella called Big Bill Broonzy. And boy, could he play.”
by Johnny Black ( Classic Rock )
(Photo by Estate Of Keith Morris)
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