byjimini
Well-known member
I can't get into this habit; I read about BB King and I think it sounds awesome, but I just don't view my ukes as having their own souls etc, well at least not yet. To me they're just beautiful pieces of wood that make a lovely sound.
No guitarist is more wedded to his instrument than the reigning Monarch of the Blues, B.B. King. As the man himself tells it, in 1949 he was playing a ‘Chitlin Circuit’ dancehall in Arkansas when the heater upended and set the building on fire. In his haste to escape the flames, King left his beloved Gibson semi-hollow electric guitar inside.
Mortified at his potential loss, King ran back into the burning building and retrieved it. The next day he learned the fire was started by two men fighting over a woman named Lucille, so he named the guitar ‘Lucille’ to remember those mad moments when he risked his life to save it. He then vowed never again to run into a burning building or fight over women (some will argue these are two separate things, but they don’t understand the blues).
In 1968 King described Lucille with equal parts sacred devotion and dirty passion: “it loves to be petted and played with. There’s also a certain way you hold it, the certain noises it makes, the way it excites me … and Lucille don’t want to play anything but the blues … Lucille is real, when I play her it’s almost like hearing words, and of course, naturally I hear cries.”