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| B.B. King and Buddy Guy to play Norfolk in June Music Hall of Famers' and Blues Legends B.B. King and Buddy Guy will take the stage at the Constant Center on Thursday, June 2. Tickets go on sale Friday, February 11 at 10 am and will be available through COXTix.com, by phone at 888-3-COXTIX and at the Constant Center Box Office. For more than half a century, Riley B. King - better known as B.B. King - has defined the blues for a worldwide audience. Since he started recording in the 1940s, he has released over fifty albums, many of them classics. Over the years, B.B. has developed one of the world's most identifiable guitar styles. He borrowed from Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker and others, integrating his precise and complex vocal-like string bends and his left hand vibrato, both of which have become indispensable components of rock guitarist's vocabulary. His economy, his every-note-counts phrasing, has been a model for thousands of players, from Eric Clapton and George Harrison to Jeff Beck. B.B. has mixed traditional blues, jazz, swing, mainstream pop and jump into a unique sound. In B.B.'s words, "When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille." With his new album, "Living Proof", Buddy Guy takes a hard look back at a remarkable life. At age 74, he's a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a major influence on rock titans like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago's fabled West Side sound, and a living link to that city's halcyon days of electric blues. He has received 5 Grammy Awards, 23 W.C. Handy Blues Awards (the most any artist has received), the Billboard magazine Century Award for distinguished artistic achievement, and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. Rolling Stone ranked him in the top 30 of its "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." Buddy Guy once said, "The other day, I heard B.B. King say, 'I can't slow down, because I still think there's somebody out there who doesn't know who I am yet.' But, you know, blues players don't stop, they just drop. It's like my mother used to say about religion—I'm too far gone to turn around!" write your comments about the article :: © 2011 Jazz News :: home page |