![Joe Bonamassa reveals that BB King showed him how to operate an iPod.]](https://backingtracksfullcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Joe-Bonamassa-reveals-that-BB-King-showed-him-how-to-758x426.jpg "Joe Bonamassa reveals that BB King showed him how to operate an iPod.] 1")
BB King’s influence on blues guitar is immeasurable but we could begin to count the ways in which he shaped the art form, in the players who sought out his tutelage and counsel, who absorbed his technique, his Mozart-esque command over vibrato and phrasing, his economy with the electric guitar.
He was the one to influence the greats, from O.G. Chicago blues phenoms such as Buddy Guy, ZZ Top‘s Billy Gibbons, the British blues boom – Clapton, Green, Beck et al – right on through to the present day and the players who readily signed up to the BB King’s Blues Summit 100 tribute album convened and produced by Joe Bonamassa, who was another top-tier player in thrall to BB King.
Indeed, in 2021, when MusicRadar asked Bonamassa for the 10 players who blew his mind, King was the first to come to mind; he was the “archetype”.
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“Talk about a guy that was able to identify himself with just one single note,” said Bonamassa. “Those early live recordings from the early ‘60s, Live At The Regal, Blues Is King… when he had that reverb-drenched stereo Gibson sound? That was the archetype for electric blues for me.”
Bonamassa and BB King go way back. They first met in 1990, when Bonamassa’s band was opening for him at the Lilac Festival, in Rochester, New York.
This was Bonamassa the wunderkind, the 13-year-old guitar prodigy who’d be on local broadcast TV spots making his Fender Telecaster squeal. BB King had booked him to play and they had been friends ever since.
In a recent interview with Guitarist magazine, Bonamassa opened up about their friendship and offered fans an insight to the kind of man BB King was. First of all, just being in his presence was an eduction.
“You couldn’t help but watch him and learn,” says Bonamassa. “He was always very encouraging, like, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing and don’t change.’”
This was good advice. As Bonamassa notes, it served BB King so well. No one was more in touch with who they were as a player than King.
“I can’t think of another guitar player that with a single note is that identifiable, you know what I mean? Maybe Albert King, but Albert King really would require a two- or three-note phrase,” says Bonamassa. “But BB King could just play one note, and it’s like you know who he is, and those are the players you can’t help but pay attention to and understand and learn from.”
It wasn’t just the guitar. BB King was a renaissance man. Given that he was one of electric blues’ great pioneers, should we be surprised that he was good with technology? Bonamassa was. By the sounds of things, he was still in the analogue era of the Sony Walkman et al while King was au fait with mp3s.
“Well, he showed me how to drag songs from a computer into an iPod when he was 80 years old!” says Bonamassa. “I didn’t know how to do that and he’s like, ‘Here, son, this is how you do it.’ How sad is that? I was 28 or something and he was 80.”
But maybe the biggest lesson anyone could take from BB King as an artist was his work ethic. Bonamassa speaks of a man who was the definition of a road dog, and would not cancel a show for anyone.
“He was a consummate professional. I remember one time in Charleston, West Virginia, there was a big snowstorm, and the governor of West Virginia called specifically to ask B.B. King to postpone the show and he wouldn’t do it,” says Bonamassa. “He goes, ‘I told them I’m going to be here in March and I’m here.’ They’re like, ‘But Mr King, it’s unsafe.’ He said, ‘Well, I made it!’ So that was him, man.”
He was a total sweetheart and a total badass
Derek Trucks
Bonamassa put together a formidable roster of musical talent for his tribute album. There were modern day players such as Marcus King, Larkin Poe, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, and Joanne Shaw Taylor.
The greatest living bluesman, Buddy Guy, is on the record, too. And a certain Eric Clapton stepped up for The Thrill Is Gone, playing alongside Chaka Khan (if ever there was a track that demanded the heavy hitters). Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks are on it, too.
Trucks is another who counts BB King among the 10 players who blew his mind. Speaking to MusicRadar in 2019, Trucks recalled his father having this look of wonder in his eye whenever he spoke about BB King playing live – and he would talk about it a lot. “He would always talk about it,” laughed Trucks.
The Tedeschi Trucks bandleader – who can play a bit of guitar himself, see above – says King was proof that you could sometimes meet your heroes and they exceed your expectations.
“He was a total sweetheart and a total badass,” said Trucks. “The way you feel when you hear him is the way you feel when you hang out with him. He was a special one.”
Trucks echoed Bonamassa’s sentiments about BB King, blues guitar, and the art of economical phrasing.
“People would get up and play with BB and play a million notes and BB would just hang one note out there and just wipe the stage clear!” said Trucks. “I’ve seen him do it. He was the greatest ambassador for that music that you could possibly find.”
BB King’s Blues Summit 100 is out now via KTBA Records.
