If you want to argue with me about who the greatest guitar player of all time is, I am going to shut you down and say it’s Stevie Ray Vaughan, hands down. But, if you want to ask who the greatest bluesman of all time is, that’s different. I would have to say that it is today’s fatcon, for sure. A bluesman, to me, is a man who makes love to the blues right there in front of the whole world. It is a coitus of music and man and misery so intense that people who hear it can feel the music like a shot to their hearts and are instantly transported to a place and time when they knew pain and heartache and sadness.

Now, if you don’t like the blues, you should probably kill yourself. And I mean that in the nicest way. The blues is the foundation for rock and roll and r & b and modern music as we know it. It is the string that wove the music that you listen to today. You should go out and get yourself some blues records and develop a relationship with this music. Preferably under the duress of some severe heartache. Drink some aged scotch and get nice and drunk. Wail and hurt and feel the blues. The blues should become a part of your music arsenal ASAP.

Especially if it is played by this man right here.

The first time I heard this man play, I was about 10. I had taken all my dad’s records (Real records. Vinyl goodness.) and I was perusing them so I could learn myself something about my pop, who was no longer around and wouldn’t be until about seven years later. Of course, there was a lot of Bob Marley. (LOL My dad was such a pothead.) But there was also an album in there called BB KING Live At Cook County Jail and there was a track on there called Worry, Worry, Worry that blew my fucking mind. I mean…the blues blew me right out of the water. The guitar. The raunchy use of the F chord. The extended intro that to any blues lover is like foreplay and then, B.B. King sang. He sang and I was in love. And not the fickle love of today. Oh, no. Me and B.B. King are still in love to this day, 20 years later. Meet Fatcon #20. The undisputed king of the blues.

#20 B.B. King

King of the Blues...B.B. King and his Lucille.

B.B. King was born in Mississippi. The South, where blues was born and flourished and seduced minds and ears.  Like so many bluesmen before and after him, his roots were in the church and gospel music. I like to think that the blues is a lot like gospel. It is like singing praise onto the Lord, but in a different way. It is a lament to the Heavens for peace and easement of great pain. The blues, to me, is like sending your tears to God through music. Mr. King learned the blues from the legendary T-Bone Walker and then, and only then, he knew that he would have to pay electric guitar to get his blues sound across. And that, my friends, was when B.B. King forayed into greatness.

To say that B.B. King is a good guitar player is an understatement of the most-epic proportions. B.B. King is a guitar god. His is a timing and a slide-guitar technique that only comes from players who view the guitar as an extension of themselves. B.B. King doesn’t play guitar, he is guitar. His relationship with his guitar, named Lucille, is a marriage of tumultuous heat and passion. Of languid and lengthy lovemaking. When he and Lucille get together, what you are hearing is almost, practically pornographic. He plays the guitar like it was a woman and to hear it is to know what a real lover is.

And, B.B. King is a big, big man, ya’ll. And I know that this is a Fatcon countdown and I know that I should be reveling in his fatness, but honestly, I would rather revel in his music. So let me go ahead and get this out of the way: B.B. is a big man that rests his guitar, Lucille, on his gut when he plays. There. Now you know why he is on this list. But if you take anything from this post it should be that B.B. King is an icon, period. The man has rocked with the likes of U2, Eric Clapton and Gladys Knight. People beg to play with him. He is one of the rocks of the blues movement and at 85, he is still rocking out today. He is a blues legend. A blues god. He is the king of the blues. And you should listen to him wail.

Congratulations B.B….you’re #20 on this list.

-goobs