Billy Gibbons tells the story of how BB King once tried out his guitar for size and asked him why he was working so hard, advising the ZZ Top man to size down on the electric guitar strings. It was advice Gibbons took onboard. He strung up with a set of .007s and the rest is history.
But BB King was not always so hot on those lighter string gauge, at least not as Lee Ritenour remembers it. Ritenour has revealed that playing the King Of The Blues’ legendary electric guitar Lucille was the very definition of hard work – and that made BB King’s playing style, typified by that vibrato, all the more phenomenal.
