B.B. King has died. Anyone reading this already knows that – I held off a couple of days. I was away. The news had to soak in. Almost everyone else has paid tribute anyway, or will…but I also held off because, well, I wrote about B.B. King often. And every post – in some way – felt a little like a eulogy-in-waiting.

It all clicked for me when I saw When We Were Kings. I’d grown up listening to some B.B. King and liking it, but I couldn’t quite see and hear the magic. As soon as I saw him on that big screen, footage of him from the 1970s, I was won over completely. That voice was always astonishing. Such an incredible singer. And of course the guitar playing. The perfect way he chose a note, a single note, to say everything. And more. Those solos would just bite in and take the song somewhere else.

I grew up knowing B.B. King was a legend – and liking his music. But over the last 20 years he became one of my musical heroes. There was a generosity of spirit about the man that was reflected in his playing, and in the way he chose collaborators.

And then, a few years back B.B. King played his last New Zealand show. And I knew I had to go. Me and a friend drove from Hawke’s Bay to Auckland and back in the same night. It was a pilgrimage. We weren’t expecting the B.B. of Cook County Jail (which we blasted on the way, and had blasted on other car trips to other concerts too). We weren’t even expected the B.B. that was given a foot up by U2 in the late-eighties. We were expecting a B.B. King in his late-80s. Old. Frail. Seated. Meandering at times. But we had Goosebumps when he waddled to the stage and sat. We had spine-chills when that first snare-drum crack went down like a jackhammer. And we were wiping tears away at being within breathing distance of a man whose music meant so much.

So I wrote about B.B. King again, and it felt, again, like a bit of a eulogy.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but anyone expecting anything other than the vestiges of a show they received that night had the wrong idea. Hadn’t done the work. Wasn’t there armed with the right information.

We drove straight back, another five hour journey, after that concert ended. An emotional
journey, a long, long day. For it seemed a bit like saying goodbye to someone we would never actually meet. He was not in good shape. Although he still had a voice. And when he did touch his guitar, perhaps not as often as we would have liked, there was still something he had that no one else could get close to.

I’ve been waiting, I guess, for the news that B.B. King was taking his final, permanent rest. Waiting, in a way, ever since that concert. And that was four years ago.

But what an extraordinary life, and what a joy he was to watch and hear in the concert footage that abounds on video-store shelves and on YouTube and in record collections (you should have at least two live B.B. King records with you always – and you should know the two I mean).

Someone once bought a copy of Cook County on vinyl, transported it to New Zealand and left it at a shop for me to collect. I haven’t yet met that person, but they did it – at no great cost, but such a huge gesture – because they had read about how much I loved that Cook County album, and how much B. B. King meant to me. It was – and is – the greatest music gift I’ve ever received. It was a simple gesture. But it meant so much.

So I thought about all of that on Friday night. And I was sitting in a house with no music by B.B. King. And I was away for the weekend – and no one else quite cared like I did that the thrill, permanently and surprisingly so suddenly, was gone.

I took a few minutes to sit alone and think about that B.B. King and Friends concert, and those amazing early live albums and the jump-blues and R’n’B sides from the fifties and the best of his late-60s/70s funk/blues workouts. And that time we sat at his feet. Did the pilgrimage. All that music and those moments came flooding back.

He was one of the greatest figures in 20^th Century music. He paid the cost. Was the boss. And he was a hero – not only of the blues. But of music. And moments. And magic. There was magic when he opened his mouth, sometimes two feet back from the microphone. Other times swinging that stand like he was shaking the hand of a man that owed him so much money. There was magic in so much of his music. And there was soul, heart and heft in everything he did.

R.I.P. B.B. King