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BB King is being remembered on Google Doodle on what would have been his 94th birthday.
Born on 15 September, 1925, the musician began his career in Mississippi juke joints and local radio after discovering his special guitar skills in church.
It was through this instrument that King influenced other blues performers; his solos would showcase his ability to bend the strings in a way that hadn’t been done before.
King toured the world after his music career kicked into gear following a move to Memphis, Tennessee. He appeared on average at more than 200 concerts per year right into his 70s.
He died in Las Vegas on 14 May, 2016 aged 89 having performed his final live show the previous year.
Here are five things you need to know as Google Doodle remembers BB King.
The 40 best albums to listen to before you dieShow all 40 1 /40The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), The Velvet Underground It was Andy Warhol who wanted Lou Reed and John Cale to let his beautiful new friend Nico sing with their avant-garde rock band. Truthfully, though, Victor Frankenstein himself couldn’t have sewed together a creature out of more mismatched body parts than this album. It starts with a child’s glockenspiel and ends in deafening feedback, noise, and distortion. Side one track one, “Sunday Morning”, is a wistful ballad fit for a cool European chanteuse sung by a surly Brooklynite. “Venus in Furs” is a jangling, jagged-edge drone about a sex whipping not given lightly. “I’ll Be Your Mirror” is a love song. European Son is rock’n’roll turned sonic shockwave. That’s before you even get on to the song about buying and shooting heroin that David Bowie heard on a test pressing and called “the future of music”. Half a century on, all you have to do is put electricity through The Velvet Underground & Nico to realise that he was right. Chris Harvey
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967), Aretha Franklin When Jerry Wexler signed the daughter of a violent, philandering preacher to Atlantic records, he "took her to church, sat her down at the piano, and let her be herself". The Queen of Soul gave herself the same space. You can hear her listening to the band, biding her time before firing up her voice to demand R-E-S-P-E-C-T 50 years before the #MeToo movement. Helen Brown
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Master of Puppets (1986), Metallica Despite not featuring any singles, Metallica’s third album was the UK rock radio breakthrough they’d been looking for. In 1986, they released one of the best metal records of all time, which dealt with the potency and very nature of control, meshing beauty and raw human ugliness together on tracks like “Damage Inc” and “Orion”. This album is about storytelling – the medieval-influenced guitar picks on opener “Battery” should be enough to tell you that. Although that was really the only medieval imagery they conjured up – they ripped Dungeons & Dragons clichés out of the lyrics and replaced them with the apocalypse, with bassist Cliff Burton, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and singer/rhythm guitarist James Hetfield serving as the four horsemen. Roisin O’Connor
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Remain in Light (1980), Talking Heads “Facts are simple and facts are straight / Facts are lazy and facts are late…” sang David Byrne, submerging personal and planetary anxieties about fake news and conspicuous consumption in dense, layers and loops of Afrobeat-indebted funk. Propulsive polyrhythms drive against the lyrical pleas for us to stop and take stock. Same as it ever was. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Catch a Fire (Jamaican version) (1973), Bob Marley and the Wailers The album that carried reggae music to the four corners of the Earth and made Bob Marley an international superstar also set the political tone for many artists to follow. Marley sang of life “where the living is hardest” in “Concrete Jungle” and looked back to Jamaica’s ignoble slaving past – “No chains around my feet but I’m not free”. He packed the album with beautiful melodic numbers, such as “High Tide and Low Tide”, and rhythmic dance tracks like “Kinky Reggae”. Released outside of Jamaica by Island Records with guitar overdubs and ornamentation, the original Jamaican version is a stripped-down masterpiece. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Revolver (1966), The Beatles An unprecedented 220 hours of studio experimentation saw George Martin and The Beatles looping, speeding, slowing and spooling tapes backwards to create a terrifically trippy new sound. The mournful enigma of McCartney’s “For No One” and the psychedelia of Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “She Said, She Said” can still leave you standing hypnotised over the spinning vinyl, wondering if the music is coming out or being sucked back in. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Like a Prayer (1989), Madonna It may be the most “serious” album she’s ever made, yet Like a Prayer is still Madonna at her most accessible – pulling no punches in topics from religion to the dissolution of her marriage. In 1989, Madonna’s personal life was tabloid fodder: a tumultuous marriage to actor Sean Penn finally ended in divorce, and she was causing controversy with the “Like a Prayer” video and its burning crosses. On the gospel abandon of the title track, she takes the listener’s breath away with her sheer ambition. Where her past records had been reflections of the modern music that influenced her – Like a Prayer saw her pay homage to bands like Sly & the Family Stone, and Simon & Garfunkel. The album was also about an artist taking control over her own narrative, after releasing records that asked the audience – and the press – to like her. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Led Zeppelin IV (1971), Led Zeppelin Millennials coming at this album can end up feeling like the guy who saw Hamlet and complained it was all quotations. Jimmy Page’s juggernaut riffs and Robert Plant’s hedonistic wails set the bench mark for all subsequent heavy, hedonistic rock. But it’s worth playing the whole thing to experience the full mystic, monolithic ritual of the thing. Stairway? Undeniable. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Best of the Shangri-Las (1996), The Shangri-Las Oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no no no, no one ever did teen heartbreak quite like the Shangri-Las. Long before the Spice Girls packaged attitude for popular consumption, songwriter Ellie Greenwich was having trouble with a group of teenagers who had grown up in a tough part of Queen’s – “with their gestures, and language, and chewing the gum and the stockings ripped up their legs”. But the Shangri-Las sang with an ardour that was so streetwise, passionate and raw that it still reaches across more than half a century without losing any of its power. "Leader of the Pack" (co-written by Greenwich) may be their best-known song, but they were never a novelty act. This compilation captures them at their early Sixties peak. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), David Bowie Flamboyance, excess, eccentricity – this is the breakthrough album that asserted Bowie as glam rock’s new icon, surpassing T Rex. He may have come to rue his Ziggy Stardust character, but with it, Bowie transcended artists seeking authenticity via more mundane means. It was his most ambitious album – musically and thematically – that, like Prince, saw him unite his greatest strengths from previous works and pull off one of the great rock and roll albums without losing his sense of humour, or the wish to continue entertaining his fans. “I’m out to bloody entertain, not just get up onstage and knock out a few songs,” he declared. “I’m the last person to pretend I’m a radio. I’d rather go out and be a colour television set.” RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Unknown Pleasures (1979), Joy Division In their brief career, ended by the suicide of 23-year-old singer Ian Curtis, Joy Division created two candidates for the best album by anyone ever. Closer may be a final flowering, but Unknown Pleasures is more tonally consistent, utterly unlike anything before or since. The mood is an all-pervading ink-black darkness, but there is a spiritual force coming out of the grooves that is so far beyond pop or rock, it feels almost Dostoevskyan. There are classic songs – "Disorder", "She’s Lost Control" and "New Dawn Fades" – and for those who’d swap every note Eric Clapton ever played for one of Peter Hook’s basslines, the sequence at 4:20 on "I Remember Nothing" is perhaps the single most thrilling moment in the entire Joy Division catalogue. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Hejira (1976), Joni Mitchell Though her 1971 album, Blue, is usually chosen for these kinds of lists, Mitchell surpassed its silvery, heartbroken folk five years later with a record that found her confidently questioning its culturally conditioned expectations of womanhood. Against an ambiguous, jazzy landscape, her deepening, difficult voice weighs romance and domesticity against the adventure of “strange pillows” and solitude. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Body Talk (2010), Robyn The answer to whether Robyn could follow up the brilliance of her self-titled 2005 album came in a burst of releases in 2010, the EPs Body Talk Pt 1, Pt 2 and Pt3, and this 15-track effort, essentially a compilation album. It includes different versions of some tracks, such as the non-acoustic version of “Hang With Me” (and we can argue all night about that one), but leaves well alone when it comes to the single greatest electronic dance track since “I Feel Love”, “Dancing On My Own”. Body Talk is simply jammed with great songs. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Off The Wall (1979), Michael Jackson “I will study and look back on the whole world of entertainment and perfect it,” wrote Jackson as he turned 21 and shook off his cute, controlled child-star imagery to release his jubilant, fourth solo album. Produced by Quincy Jones, the sophisticated disco funk nails the balance between tight, tendon-twanging grooves and liberated euphoria. Glitter ball magic. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Illmatic (1994), Nas How good can rap get? This good. There are albums where the myth can transcend the music – not on Illmatic, where Nas vaulted himself into the ranks of the greatest MCs in 1994, with an album that countless artists since have tried – and failed – to emulate. Enlisting the hottest producers around – Pete Rock, DJ Premier, Q-Tip, L.E.S and Large Professor – was a move that Complex blamed for “ruining hip hop”, while still praising Nas’s record, because it had a lasting impact on the use of multiple producers on rap albums. Nas used the sounds of the densely-populated New York streets he grew up on. You hear the rattle of the steel train that opens the record, along with the cassette tape hissing the verse from a teenage Nasty Nas on Main Source’s 1991 track “Live at the BBQ”: ‘When I was 12, I went to Hell for snuffing Jesus.” RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Trans-Europe Express (1977), Kraftwerk This is the album that changes everything. The synthesised sounds coming out of Kraftwerk’s Kling-Klang studios had already become pure and beautiful on 1975’s Radio-Activity, but on Trans-Europe Express, their sophistication subtly shifts all future possibilities. The familiar quality of human sweetness and melancholy in Ralf Hutter’s voice is subsumed into the machine as rhythms interlock and bloom in side two’s mini-symphony that begins with the title track. Released four months before Giorgio Moroder’s "I Feel Love", Trans-Europe Express influenced everything from hip-hop to techno. All electronic dance music starts here. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Kind of Blue (1959), Miles Davis With the sketches of melody only written down hours before recording, the world’s best-selling jazz record still feels spontaneous and unpredictable. Davis’s friend George Russell once explained that the secret of its tonal jazz was to use every note in a scale “without having to meet the deadline of a particular chord”. Kind of Blue is unrepeatably cool. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Astral Weeks (1968), Van Morrison “If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream…” To enter this musical cathedral, where folk, jazz and blue-eyed soul meet is always to feel a sense of awe. Recorded in just two eight-hour sessions, in which Morrison first played the songs to the assembled musicians then told them to do their own thing, Astral Weeks still feels as if it was made yesterday. Morrison’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics within the richness of the acoustic setting – double bass, classical guitar and flute – make this as emotionally affecting an album as any in rock and pop. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die West Side Story Soundtrack (1961) “Life is all right in America / If you're all white in America” yelp the immigrants in this passionate and political musical relocating of Romeo and Juliet to Fifites New York. Leonard Bernstein’s sophisticated score is a melting pot of pop, classical and Latin music; Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics sharp as a flick knife. An unanswered prayer for a united and forgiving USA. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Sign o' the Times (1987), Prince Sign o’ the Times is Prince’s magnum opus from a catalogue of masterworks – a double album spanning funk, rock, R&B and most essentially, soul. It is the greatest articulation of his alchemic experiments with musical fusion – the sum of several projects Prince was working on during his most creatively fruitful year. On Sign o’ the Times, the bass is king – Prince cemented his guitar god status on Purple Rain. There are tracks that drip with sex, and love songs like “Adore”, which remains one of the greatest of all time. Stitched together with the utmost care, as if he were writing a play with a beginning, a middle and an end, the album is a landmark in both pop and in art. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Pet Sounds (1966), The Beach Boys Caught in the psychological undertow of family trauma and all those commercial surf songs, 23-year-old Brian Wilson had a panic attack and retreated to the studio to write this dreamlike series of songs whose structural tides washed them way beyond the preppy formulas of drugstore jukeboxes. Notes pinged from vibraphones and coke cans gleam in the strange, sad waves of bittersweet melody. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Ys (2006), Joanna Newsom Weave a circle round her thrice… Joanna Newsom is dismissed by some as kookily faux-naif, but her second album, before she trained out the childlike quality from her voice, may be the most enchanted record ever made. At times, she sounds other-worldly, sitting at her harp, singing to herself of sassafras and Sisyphus, but then a phrase will carry you off suddenly to the heart’s depths – “Still, my dear, I’d have walked you to the edge of the water”. Ys’s pleasures are not simple or immediate. Newsom’s unusual song structures, with their fragmented melodies, and strange and beautiful orchestral arrangements by 63-year-old Van Dyke Parks, take time to work their magic. But once you’re bewitched, Ys’s spell never wears off. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988), Public Enemy Public Enemy’s second album is hip-hop’s game-changing moment, where a new musical form that arrived fully born after years of development away from meddling outsiders found its radical voice. It Takes a Nation of Millions… is still one of the most powerful, provocative albums ever made, “Here is a land that never gave a damn / About a brother like me,” raps Chuck D on “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”. Producer Hank Shocklee creates a hard-edged sound from samples that pay homage to soul greats such as James Brown and Isaac Hayes, and Flavor Flav gives it an unmistakeable zest. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Pink Floyd It’s easy to knock these white, male, middle-class proggers, with their spaceship full of technology and their monolithic ambitions. But the walloping drums, operatic howls and “quiet desperation” of this concept album about the various forms of madness still resonates with the unbalanced, overwhelmed and alienated parts of us all. Play loud, alone and after dark. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), Lauryn Hill Lauryn Hill raised the game for an entire genre with this immense and groundbreaking work. Flipping between two tones – sharp and cold, and sensual and smoky – the former Fugees member stepped out from rap’s misogynist status quo and drew an audience outside of hip hop thanks to her melding of soul, reggae and R&B, and the recruitment of the likes of Mary J Blige and D’Angelo. Its sonic appeal has a lot to do with the lo-fi production and warm instrumentation, often comprised of a low thrumming bass, tight snares and doo-wop harmonies. But Hill’s reggae influences are what drive the album’s spirit: preaching love and peace but also speaking out against unrighteous oppression. Even today, it’s one of the most uplifting and inspiring records around. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971), Serge Gainsbourg The great French singer-songwriter provocateur probably wouldn’t get too many takers today for a concept album about a tender love between his middle-aged self and a teenage girl he knocks off her bicycle in his Rolls-Royce. But, musically, this cult album is sublime, an extraordinary collision of funk bass, spoken-word lyrics and Jean-Claude Vannier’s heavenly string arrangements. “Ballade de Melody Nelson”, sung by Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, is one of his most sublimely gorgeous songs. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die In My Own Time (1971), Karen Dalton There’s nothing contrived about Karen Dalton’s ability to flip out the guts of familiar songs and give them a dry, cracked folk-blues twist. Expanding the emotional and narrative boundaries of songs like Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves a Woman is just what she did. Why has it taken the world so long to appreciate her? HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Let England Shake (2011), PJ Harvey “Goddamn Europeans, take me back to beautiful England.” PJ Harvey may have sounded like she was channelling Boris and Nige when she made this striking album in 2015, but few Brexiteers would want to take this journey with her. Let England Shake digs deep into the soil of the land, where buried plowshares lie waiting to be beaten into swords. Death is everywhere, sometimes in its most visceral form: “I’ve seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat,” she sings on “The Words That Maketh Murder”, “Arms and legs are in the trees.” Musically, though, it’s ravishing: Harvey employs autoharp, zither, rhodes piano, xylophone and trombone to create a futuristic folk sound that’s strikingly original yet could almost be from an earlier century. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Boy in da Corner (2003), Dizzee Rascal It’s staggering to listen back to this album and remember Dizzee was just 18-years-old when he released it. Rising through the UK garage scene as a member of east London’s Roll Deep crew, the MC born Dylan Mills allegedly honed his skills in production after being excluded from every one of his classes, apart from music. If you want any sense of how ahead of the game Dizzee was, just listen to the opening track “Sittin’ Here”. While 2018 has suffered a spate of half-hearted singles playing on the listener’s sense of nostalgia for simpler times, 15 years ago Dizzee longed for the innocence of childhood because of what he was seeing in the present day: teenage pregnancies, police brutality, his friends murdered on the streets or lost to a lifestyle of crime and cash. Boy in da Corner goes heavy on cold, uncomfortably disjointed beats, synths that emulate arcade games and police sirens, and Dizzee himself delivering bars in his trademark, high-pitched squawk. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Hounds of Love (1985), Kate Bush Proof that a woman could satisfy her unique artistic vision and top the charts without kowtowing to industry expectations, Kate Bush’s self-produced masterpiece explored the extreme range of her oceanic emotions from the seclusion of a cutting-edge studio built in the garden of her 17th-century farmhouse. The human vulnerability of her voice and traditional instruments are given an electrical charge by her pioneering use of synthesisers. Thrilling and immersive. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Blue Lines (1991), Massive Attack A uniquely British take on hip hop and soul that continues to influence booming modern genres like grime and dubstep, the Bristol collective’s debut gave a cool new pulse to the nation’s grit and grey. You can smell ashtrays on greasy spoon tables in Tricky’s whisper and feel the rain on your face in Shara Nelson’s exhilarating improvisations. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Surfer Rosa (1987), Pixies It only takes 20 seconds of opening track Bone Machine to realise Pixies and producer Steve Albini have stripped down the sound of rock ’n’ roll and rebuilt it piece by piece. The angry smack of Led Zep drums, ripe bass, and sheet metal guitar straight off the Stooges’ Detroit production line are separated and recombined. Pixies’ sound is already complete before Black Francis embarks on one of his elusive pop cult narratives (“your bone’s got a little machine”). The tension between the savagery of his vocals and Kim Deal’s softer melodic tone won’t reach its perfect balance until their next album but their debut, Surfer Rosa is gigantic, and deserving of big, big love. Its “loud, quiet, loud” tectonics would prove so influential that Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain would later say he “was basically trying to rip off the Pixies”. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Talking Timbuktu (1994), Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder If you ever doubt the possibility of relaxed and respectful conversation across the world’s cultural divisions, then give yourself an hour with this astonishing collaboration between Mali’s Ali Farka Toure (who wrote all but one of the tracks) and California’s Ry Cooder (whose slide guitar travels through them like a pilgrim). Desert meets Delta Blues. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Great Gospel Men (1993), Various artists Compared to the blues, the incalculable influence of gospel music on pop, soul and rock ’n’ roll has been underplayed. It can be found in every song on this brilliant 27-track compilation. If you can’t hear James Brown in the foot-stomping opener “Move on Up a Little Higher” by Brother Joe May, you’re not listening hard enough. The road to Motown from “Lord, Lord, Lord” by Professor Alex Bradford is narrow indeed, but you could still take a side-turning and follow his ecstatic whoops straight to Little Richard, who borrowed them, and on to the Beatles who copied them from him. The swooping chord changes in James Cleveland’s “My Soul Looks Back” are magnificent. All the irreplaceable soul voices, from Aretha Franklin to Bobby Womack, were steeped in gospel. This is a great place to hear where they came from. Companion album The Great Gospel Women is a marvel, too. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Hopelessness (2016), Anonhi “A lot of the music scene is just a wanking, self-congratulatory boys club,” said this angel-voiced, transgender artist in 2012. Four years later, the seismic drums and radical ecofeminist agenda of Hopelessness shook that club’s crumbling foundations to dust. The horrors of drone warfare, paedophilia and global warming are held up to the bright lights in disconcertingly beautiful rage. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die In Utero (1993), Nirvana Kurt Cobain had one goal with In Utero: to pull Nirvana away from what he dubbed the “candy-ass” sound on Nevermind – the album that had turned them into one of the biggest rock bands on the planet – and take them back to punk-rock. He asked Pixies’ producer Steve Albini to oversee production. It didn’t exactly eschew commercial success upon release (it went on to sell 15m copies worldwide), but the heaviness the band felt as they recorded it bears down on the listener from the opening track. Disheartened by the media obsession with his personal life and the fans clamouring for the same old shit, In Utero is pure, undiluted rage. “GO AWAYYYYYYYYYYY” he screams on “Scentless Apprentice”, capturing the essence of Patrick Suskind’s novel Perfume: Story of a Murderer and using it as a metaphor for his disgust at the music industry, and the press. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Curtis (1971), Curtis Mayfield Curtis Mayfield had been spinning golden soul music from doo-wop roots with The Impressions for more than a decade before releasing his first solo album, which contains some of his greatest songs. While some point to the 1972 Blaxploitation soundtrack Superfly as the definitive Mayfield album, Curtis is deeper and more joyous, its complex arrangements masterly. Mayfield’s sweet falsetto sings of Nixon’s bland reassurances over the fuzz-bass of “(Don’t Worry) If There Is a Hell Below We’re All Going to Go”; doleful horns give the politically conscious “We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue” a profound emotional undertow; “Move On Up” is simply one of the most exhilarating songs in pop. To spend time with Curtis is to be in the presence of a beautiful soul. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Rumours (1977), Fleetwood Mac Before they went their own way, Fleetwood Mac decided to tell a story that would be the quintessential marker for American rock culture in the Seventies. As Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks tossed the charred remains of their relationship at one another on “Dreams” and “Go Your Own Way”, the rest of the band conjured up the warm West Coast harmonies, the laid back California vibes of the rhythm section and the clear highs on “Gold Dust Woman”, in such a way that Rumours would become the definitive sound of the era. At the time of its release, it was the fastest-selling LP of all time; its success turned Fleetwood Mac into a cultural phenomenon. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Are You Experienced? (1967), Jimi Hendrix A virtual unknown to rock fans just a year before – Hendrix used Are You Experienced? to assert himself as a guitar genius who could combine pop, blues, rock, R&B, funk and psychedelia in a way no other artist had before. That’s even without the essential contributions of drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, who handed Are You Experienced? the rhythmic bridge between jazz and rock. Few album openers are as exquisite as “Purple Haze”. Few tracks are as gratifying, as sexy, as the strut on “Foxy Lady”. And few songs come close to the existential bliss caused by “The Wind Cries Mary”. Hendrix’s attack on the guitar contrasted against the more polished virtuosos in rock at the time – yet it is his raw ferocity that we find ourselves coming back to. Few debuts have changed the course of rock music as Hendrix did with his. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die We Are Family (1979), Sister Sledge Disco’s crowning glory is this album that Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards made with Kathy Sledge and her sisters Debbie, Joni and Kim. Nile and ’Nard were at the peak of their powers, classic songs were pouring out of them – We Are Family was released in the same year as the epochal “Good Times” by Chic – and this album has four of them, “Lost in Music”, “He’s the Greatest Dancer”, “Thinking of You” and the title track itself. Sister Sledge gave Rodgers a chance to work with warmer, gutsier vocals than the cool voices he used to give Chic records such laid-back style and the result is a floor-filling dance party, punctuated by mellow ballads. CH
BB is a nickname
The musician’s real name was Riley B King, but he found his professional name after working as a DJ on Tennessee radio station WDIA. There, he was nicknamed Blues Boy, which was later shortened to BB.
He was one of the musicians to put Beale Street on the map
King was an integral part of the blues scene on Beale Street in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He performed alongside Bobby Bland, Johnny Ace and Earl Forrest in a band called The Beale Streeters, and would later credit the location with kick-starting his career. A blues club was opened there in his honour in 1994.
Music wasn’t his only talent
As well as singing and playing the guitar, King became a certified private pilot after learning to fly in 1963. Right up until the age of 70, he would fly to his own gigs – and only stopped because his insurance company asked him to.
Even legends have heroes
King may be one of the most celebrated musicians of all time, but he himself idolised Frank Sinatra . He revealed in his autobiography that, every night, he’d listen to Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours , and praised the crooner for opening doors for black entertainers to play in “white-dominated” venues.
18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our criticsShow all 18 1 /1818 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics 18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics David Bowie, Rainbow Theatre, 1972 The long gone Rainbow in London’s Finsbury Park was one of the great rock venues, and though I was young at the time it would be impossible to forget the impact of Bowie in one of his first outings as Ziggy Stardust. “They haven’t even finished building the stage,” I said with breathtaking naievety to the person next to me, on observing the scaffolding and ladder. Of course, it was all part of the Ziggy theatrics, a show that began with David/Ziggy walking out to the drums of “Five Years” and continued with mime, flamboyance and songs that have all become classics. I remember his appearance being heralded by music from Beethoven’s Ninth (also used in A Clockwork Orange, the film being current at the time). In those years Bowie always used it as his theme music. I also remember being blown away by the support act – a fresh, imaginative outfit called Roxy Music. (David Lister)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Dolly Parton, Dominion Theatre, 1983 Truly charismatic performers leave an indelible impression and I marvelled at the way Chuck Berry had the crowd in the palm of his hand when I saw him in the 1970s. But few could match Dolly Parton in her prime for her larger-than-life enthusiasm and sheer sense of fun. When the country superstar came to London’s Dominion Theatre in 1983, she played some mean finger-picking banjo, sang beautifully, especially on an a capella version of “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?” and even did an Elvis impression. Her concert was filmed for a video release and about half an hour after the crowd had left in, they brought in a large group of young punks and Goths (to intercut into crowd shots) and suggest an edgy young following. Happily, I had stayed around and saw her deliver this impromptu extra set, which was full of risqué jokes and blue banter. There’s no one quite like her. (Martin Chilton)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Live Aid, Wembley Stadium, 1985 You don’t usually realise you’re present at what will become a moment in history. But that sunny July afternoon at Wembley Stadium felt special right from the off, even if the off was Status Quo doing “Rockin’ All Over The World”. There were numerous stand-out moments; perhaps on paper the biggest was the return of Paul McCartney, topping the bill after nearly five years self-enforced absence from high-profile performing following the shooting of John Lennon. Somewhat sadly the sound failed for part of “Let It Be”, but we can draw a veil over that. The most stunning set of the day came from Queen: a high energy medley through “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Radio Ga Ga” to “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions”. No one fired up the crowd quite as much that day. And since the band had not been at their most visible around that time, this proved to be their resurrection. (David Lister)
18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics BB King, Hammersmith Odeon, 1985 Blues titan BB King released two of the greatest concert albums of the 20th-century in Live at the Regal (1964) and Live in Cook County Jail (1971). Even though he was 60 when I saw him at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1985, he was still full of energy. He sang with passion and his guitar work was transcendent, especially on gloriously funky version of “The Thrill is Gone”. I skipped my graduation ceremony for the concert and had the good fortune to bump into an old family friend called Ray Bolden, who had worked at Dobell's Record Shop in Charing Cross Road. King's face lit up to see Ray, who had put him up in his London flat in the 1950s. The blues superstar could not have been friendlier, despite his tiredness after a long gig. Seeing Muddy Waters live in 1979 was special but BB King at full power, bending guitar notes like no one else, topped even that. (Martin Chilton)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Rollercoaster Tour, Brixton Academy, 1992 When The Jesus & Mary Chain reached the status of noisenik godheads with their fourth album Honey’s Dead in 1992, they decided to put together a visceral modern rock revue tour called Rollercoaster that’s still ringing in my ears almost 30 years on. Of the three revolving support acts, Blur opened the night, mid-transformation from baggy latecomers to art-pop pioneers. With Damon Albarn flinging himself wildly around the stage and clambering up amp stacks, they premiered ferocious second-album character studies like “Colin Zeal” while screening films of the journey of meat from slaughterhouse to defecation, in reverse. Most crucially, with their all-horns-blazing new single “Popscene”, they kick-started Britpop right before our eyes. The Mary Chain, meanwhile, were at peak malicious, I left with my skull buzzing, my eyes opened and my tastes re-arranged, convinced I'd seen the new music, and I had. A gig that didn’t just make my night, it made me. (Mark Beaumont)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Pixies, Brixton Academy, 2004 When Pixies came onto a London stage on my birthday in 2004 and played Pixies songs – and music just doesn’t get better than that – it was pure relief, euphoria and dark-hearted epiphany. “Tame” sent me feral, “Gigantic” was titanic, “Bone Machine” crushed out my marrow. Black Francis snarled, barked and ranted through “Gouge Away”, “Monkey Gone To Heaven” and “Debaser”, every bit the demented pervert preacher he ever was; Kim Deal’s angelic coos and bass melodies made an unholy pact with Joey Santiago’s werewolf guitar riffs, seemingly played with a plectrum made of Satan’s fingernail. Of their four Brixton dates that week, I lost every ounce of my s*** at three. Best gigs ever, no particular order. (Mark Beaumont)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Foals, Buffalo Bar, 2007 North London’s tiny and now-defunct, Buffalo Bar in the 2000s, hosted early gigs from the likes of Bloc Party, The Libertines, The Maccabees – or Foals. Their show took place 14 months before the release of their debut album Antidotes, and it justified their precocious reputation as a live act. That night, the energy of their high-octane math-rock was infectious; it’s not often that you see a band in their earliest days and know that this is probably the last time you’ll be able to reach out and touch them. The songs followed: "The French Open", "Balloons", "Hummer”, “Mathletics”, all fuelled by astoundingly complex polyrhythms, interweaving staccato synths and guitar played high on the fretboard in angular electro harmonies, set to punk-disco techno beats and urgent "new wave" vocals. I’d never seen a rock gig so precisely engineered (a sticker on the synth read "Math is for Everyone"), yet so exhilarating. There was a true sense we’d discovered something great. (Elisa Bray)
Rex
18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Crystal Castles, Camden Crawl, 2008 Problematic in every way given singer Alice Glass’s October 2017 statement accusing her former bandmate Ethan Kath of sexual abuse, non-consensual sex and controlling behaviour, but this short set in front of a small crowd in a Camden bar was proof that when a performer truly plugs into the mother lode, the intensity they generate can burn itself into your retinas and shake your soul. Glass was 19 years old, and for most of the set just a blur of spectral movement frozen into violent shapes by an almost incessant strobe; singing, shouting and screaming her way through songs such as “Courtship Dating”. The result was a reminder that whenever one of your heroes gets on stage to try to channel that primal essence of “rock ’n’ roll” – or whatever the hell it is – most of the time, they’re just trying to find an echo of something that once flowed through them. That can go on for 50 years or more. There’s sadness now in the memory, but on this day in April 2008, Glass had it. (Chris Harvey)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Brighton Centre, 2008 It used to be that rock’n’roll was a young person’s game; anyone over the age of 50 still tearing it up on stage needed to calm down and have a word with themselves. Nick Cave, the latter-day harbinger of the apocalypse still identifiable by his raven hair and pallbearer’s suit, has consistently shown us the idiocy of this thinking. I’ve seen Cave perform scores of times and he has never let me down, but this show, which coincided with the release of the album Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, was a whole new level of spectacular: funny, furious, life-affirming, heavy on the biblical melodrama. Alongside the Bad Seeds, then operating as a seven-piece coolly attired in suits, open-necked shirts and slicked-back hair, Cave showed how musical talent can deepen rather than ebb in mid-life, and how he was – and indeed remains – untouchable in terms of intellect, charisma and sheer feral energy. (Fiona Sturges)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Leonard Cohen, Benicassim Festival, 2013 Leonard Cohen steps onto the stage, dressed in grey shirt and tie, black waistcoat, trilby concealing his white hair. It's sweltering. And yet Cohen, in his mid Seventies, is barely breaking into a sweat. Much like his attire, the songs - such as "Dance Me to the End of Love" and "So Long, Marianne" – are immaculate, his voice no longer a wail but a raw, rumbling baritone. The Spanish sun is beating down and my friends and I are genuflecting before one of the greatest lyricists of all time. This was to be the only time I saw him live and no performance has ever, in terms of pure emotional intensity, targeted me with such laser-guided precision as his rendition of "Hallelujah". The song's been covered by everyone from Jeff Buckley to Alexandra Burke, but sung by him that day, it's surely never felt as moving. (Patrick Smith)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Bobby Womack, Latitude, 2013 The great Sixties and Seventies soul singers are nearly all gone now, and I doubt we’ll ever see their like again. Bobby Womack had recovered from colon cancer but was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, and less than a year from his death in June 2014, when he played the UK in the summer of 2013. He came on stage on a sunny Saturday afternoon at the Latitude festival, to play songs from his brilliant comeback album, The Bravest Man in the Universe, to a basking, picnicking audience. “All soul singers come from gospel,” he told them. Womack’s voice still seemed like a gift from God. The years of cocaine addiction hadn’t altered its richness and warmth. To be in the presence of Womack that day, knowing it would likely be the last time, was very special. (Chris Harvey)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics St Vincent, End of the Road, 2014 Most rockstars, terrified of seeming to be trying too hard, would never dream of hiring a choreographer. But St Vincent, AKA Annie Clark, is no ordinary rockstar. For her Digital Witness tour, the musician recruited Annie B Carson to help her dream up a procession of strange, shuffling moves to perform alongside her brilliant self-titled fourth album. At End of the Road Festival – a small, Dorset delight which she had played with David Byrne a year earlier – her headline set was scuzzy, eccentric, and thrilling. At one point, without missing a lick on her guitar, she rolled herself down an oversized flight of white stairs like a glitching robot. Then again, no robot can play guitar like that. (Alexandra Pollard)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Kate Bush, Hammersmith Apollo, 2014 After 35 years away from the stage it was a moment Kate Bush fans never thought would happen. Beforehand, I was reporting from outside the venue for NME and the excitement and energy was extraordinary, like nothing I've ever experienced. One woman told me it would be fine if she died after the gig because she would die happy. The show started with a "greatest hits" section. And then it all got a bit more, well, Kate Bush, with a dramatic adaptation of "The Ninth Wave". Sinking ships, confetti cannons, surreal fish people and a soliloquy about sausages. Act three was more pastoral. The second side of "Aerial", "The Sky of Honey", was performed in front of the most beautiful visuals I've ever seen: birds, a red sun, a moon tilting on its axis and then Kate suspended into the air. Pure theatre. As we filed out, there was a sense that the audience was stunned. I still am. (Lucy Jones)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Patti Smith, Field Day, 2015 Patti Smith was celebrating the 40th anniversary of her seminal 1975 album Horses at Field Day in Victoria Park, London, 2015. The sky was a perfect blue, and the sun was still blazing hot at 7pm. “I’m sorry about the dark glasses,” Smith said by way of introduction. “I’m not trying to be cool, it’s just, you know… the sun.” “You’re the f***ing coolest!” a fan screamed back. From there, she and her band, including long-serving guitarist Lenny Kaye, embarked on a blistering set that had myself, and many other audience members, in tears. Smith is a ferocious performer, she spat and snarled and howled; tearing up her guitar as though it just insulted one of her favourite poets. It didn’t matter if she messed up, as she did on “Break it Up”, because she offered the instantly immortal words: “I don’t do nothing perfect. I only f*** up perfect.” You felt you were in the presence of something momentous. (Roisin O’Connor)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics D'Angelo, Hammersmith Apollo, 2015 When D’Angelo released his surprise third record – the politically fraught Black Messiah – it ended the 14-year hiatus that followed 2000’s Voodoo. It also reminded music fans that the American hip-hop artist was still as monumentally talented as he was back then. Accompanied by his eight-strong band The Vanguard, his show at the Hammersmith Apollo was a visceral, quasi-religious experience. Jesse Johnson, formerly of Prince-produced outfit The Time, added funky hooks to “Sugah Daddy”, while legendary bassist Pino Palladino took time out from The Who's live shows to join in the fun. At one point D’Angelo led a classic James Brown funk staple, holding three fingers in the air so the band could respond with three loud vamps. One encore was followed by a second that broke the curfew with free abandon, until D’Angelo was left on stage alone, reflective and blissful. It inspired a divine kind of worship, for a show that was appropriately titled "The Second Coming". (Roisin O’Connor)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Lorde, Brighton Centre, 2017 A week before she played Brighton, I reviewed Lorde’s Alexandra Palace show in London. It was a five-star performance – the New Zealand musician exorcised the pain of the break-up she'd chronicled on her brilliant second album Melodrama, twitching and twirling as an abstract house party played out in glass boxes around her. The stage design was so good, in fact, that Kanye West may or may not have nicked it a year later. Seeing her in Brighton the following week, without a notepad in my hand, I saw even more clearly all the intimate nuances of her performance – and was free to give in entirely to the exhilarating, heartbreaking melodrama of it all. (Alexandra Pollard)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics David Byrne, Brighton Centre, 2018 When you’ve been going to gigs for decades, you tend not to expect anything new, just variations – some mind-blowing, others not – on what you have seen before. So when I saw David Byrne’s American Utopia show, it felt like stumbling on the Ark of the Covenant. Here was a man who had been working in music for 40 years completely redrawing the rules of pop performance – no drum riser, no cables, no visible amps or microphones – and taking it deep into the territory of experimental theatre. In opposition to the usual freeform live music set-up, this tour was the result of fastidious planning, with everything rehearsed to the last nanosecond. And yet, forever on the move, dressed in matching grey suits and dancing barefoot in formation, Byrne and his 12-piece band were loose-limbed, unfettered and joyous to watch. And the music was pretty great too. (Fiona Sturges)
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18 of the greatest gigs ever – according to our critics Christine and the Queens, Hammersmith Apollo, 2018 Before her short run at Hammersmith Apollo last year, Héloïse Letissier – known as Christine and the Queens, though she dropped all but the "Chris" for her second album – tweeted: “I think we finally have some surprises for those who come to the shows!” She delivered on that promise – falling snow and sand, and a balcony homage to Romeo and Juliet – as she redefined what a pop show could be. With a gender-fluid cohort of athletic dancers, she brought to theatrical life her tumultuous journey towards embracing her pansexual identity, and finding liberation. And we went through all those emotions with her, those alternately tender and powerful vocals never faltering despite the restless dance routines. Everyone was on their feet dancing, and her declaration of inclusivity could not have been more empowering: “Vive everyone!” We left thrilled and elated. (Elisa Bray)
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He was a fervent campaigner
King was extremely active in raising awareness of race and class issues, co-founding the Foundation for the Advancement of Inmate Rehabilitation and Recreation in support of prison reformation. In September 1970, he recorded Live in Cook County Jail , where he and his band performed for an audience of over 2,000 prisoners in Chicago.
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