B.B. King discusses what he likes about his favorite guitarists from a 1975 Guitar Player article
I’m as much a jazz fan as I am a blues fan. I like country and western music, too. Chet Atkins, to me, is a master guitarist. But among my very favorites are these ten men: T-Bone Walker, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Johnny Moore, Bill Jennings, Big Joe Williams, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Charlie Christian, Earl Hooker, Robert Nighthawk, and Lloyd Ellis.
T-Bone Walker, for instance, has a touch that nobody has been able to duplicate. I’ve listened to Alexis Korner, Big Bill Broonzy, and others — all possess a certain touch and tone settings that are different. And when I hear T-Bone play, his tone setting is like no one else’s. He has a strange way of holding his guitar, slanting it away from him instead of having it lay flat against his stomach. It’s almost like he were playing a steel guitar, but he curls his left arm underneath, and reaches his fingers up over the top. And he seems to kind of scrape his pick across the strings. How he’s able to hit specific strings, I just don’t know. And that touch he gets! I’ve tried my best to get that sound — especially in the late ’40s and early ’50s. I came pretty close, but I never quite got it. I can still hear T-Bone in my mind today, from that first record I heard, “Stormy Monday,” around ’43 or ’44. He was the first electric guitar player I heard on record. He made me so that I knew I just had to go out and get an electric guitar.
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B.B King is such a legend, it’s great to know what artists inspired him.
I think that all famous guitarists were inspired by some other great musicians. And because inspiration is a very powerful tool – it happens to be the main reason of why new stars begin to shine in the universe of music! Inspiration is like a big treasure – if you find it – it means that you find the power to create unforgettable art!