Last week, after we learned of the pass­ing of B.B. King, Josh Jones high­light­ed some elec­tric live per­for­mances of the blues leg­end — per­for­mances that put his vir­tu­os­i­ty on full dis­play. Yes­ter­day, an Open Cul­ture read­er sent us a pret­ty amaz­ing clip that shows what a musi­cian King was at heart. The scene is Farm Aid, 1985, attend­ed by a crowd of 80,000 peo­ple. The song is “How Blue Can You Get.” And the key moment comes at the 3:10 mark, when King busts a gui­tar string, then man­ages to replace it before the song fin­ish­es min­utes lat­er. All the while, he keeps the song going, nev­er miss­ing a beat and singing the blues. Enjoy.

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via Gui­tar Play­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Elec­tric Live Per­for­mances

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

Image via Chris­ti­aan Ton­nis

Like many of the best coun­ter­cul­tur­al icons, William S. Bur­roughs had at least two sep­a­rate peri­ods of under­ground fame. The first came in the late 1950s and 60s when he wrote such clas­sics-to-be of Beat lit­er­a­ture as Junkie, Naked Lunch, and the “cut-up” tril­o­gy of The Soft Machine, The Tick­et That Explod­ed, and Nova Express. The sec­ond came in the 1980s and 90s, when a new wave of coun­ter­cul­tur­al icons, them­selves raised on Bur­roughs’ writ­ing, came of age and sought out their hero for col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“How a nov­el­ist with no musi­cal back­ground who began his career in the 1940s became so pop­u­lar an alter­na­tive music fig­ure that Kurt Cobain backed him up on one of Cobain’s last record­ings is one of the odd­er, more fas­ci­nat­ing foot­notes in this oth­er­wise heav­i­ly exam­ined musi­cal era,” says Music for Mani­acs.

Many rock­ers who looked up to Bur­roughs attend­ed his live read­ings, but for some, “it was­n’t enough to just lis­ten to Bur­roughs read his own works, with increas­ing­ly elab­o­rate musi­cal back­ings, but to hire him to per­form on record­ings. And that is what we have here: not Bur­roughs’ own releas­es, but his var­i­ous mis­cel­la­neous appear­ances on oth­er bands’ songs.”

Above, hear Bur­roughs with Tom Waits on jazz tune “T’Ain’t No Sin” and with Min­istry on “Quick Fix.” You can lis­ten to all of these record­ings, in which Bur­roughs records with or cov­ers the mate­r­i­al of REM, The Doors, Lau­rie Ander­son, Mar­lene Diet­rich, Kurt Cobain, and oth­ers, at Ubuweb. The playlist runs as fol­lows. Click to lis­ten:

1. Fuck Me Kit­ten (with REM, from “Songs in the Key of X: Music from and Inspired by ‘the X‑Files’ ” — 1996)
2. Is Every­body In? (with The Doors, recit­ing Jim Mor­ri­son poet­ry, from “Stoned Immac­u­late: The Music of the Doors”)
3. Sharkey’s Night (with Lau­rie Ander­son, from “Mis­ter Heart­break” — 1983)
4. What Keeps Mankind Alive (from Kurt Weill trib­ute album “Sep­tem­ber Songs”)
5. ‘T ‘Aint No Sin (1920s jazz song, per­formed on Tom Waits’ “The Black Rid­er” — 1993)
6. Quick Fix (w/Ministry, “Just One Fix” b‑side — 1992)
7. Old Lady Sloan (w/The Eudo­ras, cov­er­ing a song by a Lawrence, Kansas punk band from “The Mor­tal Micronotz Trib­ute!” — 1995
8. Ich Bin Von Kopf Bis Fub Auf Liebe Eingestellt (Falling In Love Again) — Mar­lene Deitrich cov­er, from “Dead City Radio” — 1988
9. The “Priest” They Called Him — (w/Kurt Cobain, 1992)

Not only do per­form­ers like Bur­roughs rarely enjoy a two-act career like his, they hard­ly ever put out mate­r­i­al as odd in their last act as they did in their first. But noth­ing in the life of the “rock star to rock stars,” as Music for Mani­acs calls him, hap­pened in the tra­di­tion­al mat­ter. And once you get through his stint as an alter­na­tive rock star, do have a look at his stint as an alter­na­tive per­former on the sil­ver screen.

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Orig­i­nal Bands

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

The Mak­ing of Drug­store Cow­boy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989)

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

One of the last great Mis­sis­sip­pi blues­men, Riley B. King, is gone, passed away last night at the age of 89. King made per­haps the most suc­cess­ful crossover of any blues artist into main­stream rock and roll, record­ing with Clap­ton and play­ing for rock audi­ences for decades. But his sound remained root­ed firm­ly in the very blues he cut his teeth on in the fields of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta and in Mem­phis, where he hitch­hiked at 22, with $3 in his pock­et, and quick­ly became a hit as a song­writer and D.J. called the Beale Street Blues Boy—B.B. for short. He “was paid four cents,” writes Buz­zfeed, “for every album he made.”

“By his 80th birth­day,” writes The New York Times, “he was a mil­lion­aire many times over. He owned a man­sion in Las Vegas, a clos­et full of embroi­dered tuxe­does and smok­ing jack­ets, a chain of nightclubs…and the per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al sat­is­fac­tion of hav­ing endured.” King’s sig­na­ture gui­tars, cus­tomized Gib­son 355s he named Lucille, are as ele­gant and styl­ish as the man him­self. I once stood in front of one of them in a glass case at the Stax muse­um in Mem­phis, star­ing in awe, exam­in­ing the places where his hands had worn into the wood, try­ing to absorb a lit­tle of the mag­ic. King’s sto­ry is one of suc­cess far beyond what most of his peers could imag­ine. But it is also one of pro­found ded­i­ca­tion to the blues, and of over­com­ing racism, pover­ty, and pain—suffering he chan­neled into his music and nev­er lost sight of through the wealth and fame.

Well-deserved trib­utes from fans and fel­low musi­cians are every­where today—to King’s per­son­al warmth and charm, to his impas­sioned singing, and, of course, his incred­i­bly expres­sive vibra­to gui­tar play­ing. “The tone he got out of that gui­tar, the way he shook his left wrist, the way he squeezed the strings,” says gui­tarist Bud­dy Guy, “… man, he came out with that and it was all new to the whole gui­tar playin’ world. The way BB did it is the way we all do it now. He was my friend and father to us all.” See and hear B.B. do it above in live per­for­mances of “The Thrill is Gone” and “Blues Boys Tune.” And just above, see him play and tell his sto­ry in a short 1972 doc­u­men­tary called “Sound­ing Out.” It may be too late now to see the great man per­form live, but it’s nev­er to late to learn about his lega­cy as the undis­put­ed “king of the blues.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness