B.B.King - Why I Sing The Blues | Lyrics Meaning !!TOP!!
"Why I Sing The Blues" by B.B. King is a powerful song about the struggles and hardships that the artist has faced as an African American. King highlights the various challenges he has faced, including being brought over on a ship as a slave, living in poverty in the ghetto, and struggling to find adequate housing despite promises from the government. The song shows King's resilience in the face of adversity, as he declares that he loves to sing his blues, despite the pain and struggles that have inspired them. He also acknowledges that he is not alone in his struggles, and urges his listeners to take notice of the injustices around them. Overall, "Why I Sing The Blues" is a poignant reminder of the systemic racial oppression that has plagued African Americans for centuries, and a testament to the power of music as a means of expressing and coping with that pain.
B.B.King - Why I Sing The Blues | Lyrics Meaning
King kept on touring over the years to become probably the most widely known blues singer in history. For more than fifty years he has played to audiences across the United States and the world. He was the first to introduce blues to Japanese, Russian, and Chinese audiences. King has released over fifty albums, many of them classics. He continues to tour, playing over 200 concerts a year around the world.
There are some chord patterns that are specific to the blues, with early songs characterized by a single line that was repeated four times. Later, the AAB pattern became more standard, as did a call-and-response kind of format.
Still in his late 20s, he had become one of the leading performers on the blues circuit. Audiences from the Deep South to the large cities of the North thrilled to his rich, warm voice and reveled in his humor and depth of feeling. Aspiring guitarists studied his records to emulate his singing, stinging tone. With his crack horn section, he created a fresh fusion of gospel, jazz, pop and traditional blues that set a new standard.
The undisputed monarch of the blues guitar, B.B. King was born on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta. As a child he learned the rudiments of his instrument from his preacher and was soon performing blues and gospel songs on street corners. In 1947 he hitchhiked to Memphis, Tennessee with $2.50 in his pocket to pursue a professional music career. Within a year he was singing on the radio and in local night clubs.
There have been numerous compilations of the best of B.B. King's recordings for the Modern label in the 1950s and early '60s, and if you've already picked up one of them, there isn't an urgent reason to replace or upgrade it with this CD. If not, however, this certainly makes a good bid to be considered as the best single-disc anthology of this era. The 25 tracks include many of his biggest hits and most famous classics from the period, among them "3 O'Clock Blues," "Woke Up This Morning," "Every Day I Have the Blues," "Sweet Little Angel," "Sweet Sixteen," "How Blue Can You Get?," and "Rock Me Baby," and the lesser-known tunes are of equal or near-equal quality. It's true that if you have a bit more cash and time, you might be better off with the two-CD, 40-track Original Greatest Hits, which might be a little easier to find in the U.S. than this U.K. import as well. It's also true that if you want a whole lotta Modern sides by King, you could plumb for Ace's four-CD The Vintage Years box, as well as the same label's extensive series of individual B.B. King CDs of Modern material. If you're not a completist, however, it'll come as something of a revelation as to how much better early King sounds when that mammoth body of work is whittled down to his best and, for the most part, most accessible stuff. To those more used to his later recordings, too, it will come as a surprise to hear how raw and raucous some of these performances sound in comparison to his more urbane soul-blues of later years; a few of them are even a bit influenced by early rock & roll. Note that the one previously unreleased track, by the way, is a "previously unissued intercut version of takes 2, 3, 4" of "Why I Sing the Blues" that even many completists could probably live without.
Riley B. King was born on September 16, 1925, between Itta Bena and Indianola, Mississippi. His parents split up when he was a small child, and he lived for a few years with his mother in the Mississippi hills. She died when he was nine, and he was alone until his father, Albert King, found him a few years later. Working on a cotton plantation in Indianola, he earned $22.50 a week. "I guess the earliest sound of blues that I can remember was in the fields while people would be pickin' cotton or choppin' or somethin'." King noted in a 1988 Living Blues interview cited in Contemporary Musicians. "When I sing and play now I can hear those same sounds that I used to hear then as a kid."
King sang gospel music in church and even performed professionally with the Famous St. John Gospel Singers, but he was not allowed to sing the blues, which was considered "the devil's music." Still, he listened to recordings by early blues masters, especially Sonny Boy Williamson, on his aunt's record player. King's farm boss loaned him money to buy a guitar and sign up for music lessons, and King quickly developed as a blues player. Soon he was earning more singing and playing guitar on street corners on Saturday than he made all week on the plantation. King left Mississippi for Memphis, Tennessee, which promised the excitement and musical atmosphere he dreamed of. He settled there for good in 1948.
Taiwan MC - Let the Weed BunMy weed are the baddest in the place, come in my yard and smoke 'pon thisHerbalistic this is how we kick it outer space manWhen we blazing up we sing the blues like BB King son*Scat*
Everlast - What It's Like"Get a job, you fuckin' slob," is all he repliesGod forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes'Cause then you really might know what it's like to sing the blues
Motörhead - I Don't Believe A WordDon't be my friend I'm not a foolDon't talk of things that we cannot seeWhen all the ones that sing the bluesSometimes I think of how it used to be
Cássia Eller - The Blues About MercyBecause there's a fire burning under the sparse rain dropsWhen talking about disgrace, we're all the sameLet's sing the blues about mercyLet's ask for mercy
There are four men in the cramped Sun Records studio: bassist Bill Black, guitarist Scotty Moore, producer Sam Phillips in the back, and the sexy young kid thumping his guitar as he sings, nineteen-year-old Elvis Presley. It's 1954. Sam Phillips is doing all right for himself. He has been among the first to record men who will be giants in the world of postwar blues: B.B. King, Junior Parker, and Howlin' Wolf. There are many others ready to follow in their footsteps, but he has deeper aspirations. In Presley, he sees the new world order: a white boy, culturally influenced by country and gospel, who can sing the blues.
The four of them, having reached a momentary musical impasse, take a break. They all seem to realize that they're on the brink of something big; however, they can't quite seem to put it all together. Their conservation--about music, naturally--comes around to the blues, interpreters like Arthur Crudup. You know that one song he did? It goes like this! Presley picks up his guitar and starts riffing. In a second he is singing, "That's all right, mama, that's all right with me..." Black and Moore pick up the groove behind him.
Born Riley B. King in Itta Bena, Mississippi, blues singer and guitarist B. B. King grew up on a plantation, working as a farmhand. He sang in choirs at school and church before teaching himself to play the guitar. He moved to Memphis in 1947 and began singing blues in bars. Following a radio appearance with Sonny Boy Williamson (Alex Miller), King began working on Memphis radio station WDIA as "the Pepticon Boy," advertising Pepticon tonic. He later became a disc jockey for WDIA, being billed as "the Blues Boy from Beale Street," gradually becoming "B. B." He began recording in 1949 and had a few local hits. His recording of "Three O'Clock Blues" (1952) was a national hit and allowed him to begin touring the country as a blues singer. By the mid-1960s he had become known as one of the country's greatest blues performers and a leading figure in the urban blues scene, thanks to the praise of many "British invasion" rock musicians, including Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger, who cited his influence. He has continued to record and perform, earning many industry awards, including a Grammy for his 1981 album There Must Be a Better World Somewhere and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. In 2004 King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden awarded King with the Polar Music Prize for his contributions to the blues, including a cash prize of over $130,000. King's albums continue to be re-released in the 2000s.
And then there are the times that more than make up for all those frustrations, he said, like Tuesday night, when Jagger, King, Jeff Beck and other musical giants came by the house to sing the blues.
The lyrics are complemented by an insistently rhythmic organ and Sonny Boy's incredible crying harmonica. The combination of the lyrics and the music creates sadness, loneliness, and despair--the Blues--and yet the sound of his slashing harp and insistent flowing rhythm section indicate that despite his blues Sonny boy can still swing and by singing and playing the Blues he is able to transcend his blues.
One of the key factors accouting for the greatness of these three Bluesmen (and one of the chief weaknesses of white Blues) is the perfect integration of the singing style and lyrics with a complementary instrumental style. This is essential, for in the Blues the instrument, like the voice, is an extension of the Bluesman, his suffering, his pain, his love, his soul and his ability to express his feelings through his Blues. 041b061a72