Blues legend B.B. King scored the biggest hit of his seven-decade recording career with the 1970 classic "The Thrill Is Gone." more...
Born Riley B. King on a cotton plantation deep in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, the self-taught guitarist cut his earliest recordings in 1949 for the Bullet label before entering future Sun Records founder Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Services studio in September 1950. King's recordings with Phillips attracted the attention of Los Angeles-based RPM Records, but when his first RPM sides went nowhere, label co-founder Joe Bihari traveled back to Memphis and booked a room at the local YMCA, where he and King captured their version of Lowell Fulson's "Three O'Clock Blues." The single spent five weeks atop the Billboard R&B charts in early 1952, and King became one of the biggest draws on the blues circuit, playing hundreds of live gigs each year and winning widespread acclaim for his sophisticated guitar sound, which combined sublime string bending, staccato picking and twinkling vibrato.
King recorded "The Thrill Is Gone" for the 1969 BluesWay label LP Completely Well, produced at New York City's Hit Factory. "The Thrill Is Gone" was first released in 1951 by West Coast blues hitmaker Roy Hawkins, who co-wrote the song with Rick Darnell. King's rendition – a slow 12-bar blues notated in the key of B minor in 4/4 time – heralded a decisive break from Hawkins' original as well as King's previous efforts.
"I carried [‘The Thrill Is Gone'] around in my head for seven or eight years," King later told music journalist Alan Paul. "It was a different kind of blues ballad. I'd been arranging it in my head and had even tried a couple of different versions that didn't work. But when I walked in to record on this night at the Hit Factory, all the ideas came together. I changed the tune around to fit my style, and [producer] Bill Szymczykset up the sound nice and mellow. We got through around 3:00 a.m. I was thrilled, but Bill wasn't, so I just went home. Two hours later, Bill called and woke me up and said ‘I think "The Thrill Is Gone" is a smash hit, and it would be even more of a hit if I added on strings. What do you think?' I said ‘Let's do it.'"
When BluesWay released "The Thrill Is Gone" in December 1969, the single reached number three on Billboard's Best Selling Soul Singles chart and crossed over to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, eventually winning the 1970 Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. The success of "The Thrill Is Gone" coincided with new commercial interest in the blues galvanized by the popularity of King acolytes like the Rolling Stones and Cream, and the guitarist went on to collaborate with everyone from U2 to Cyndi Lauper, in 2001 winning another Grammy for Riding with the King, recorded with Eric Clapton.
"He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced, and the most humble and genuine man you would ever wish to meet," Clapton wrote in his 2008 biography. "In terms of scale or stature, I believe that if Robert Johnson was reincarnated, he is probably B.B. King."
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Listen to stems and multitracks from The Thrill Is Gone by B.B. King
