Another great one gone

Ken Ritter has a Time article about blues legend B.B. King, dead in Las Vegas at at the age of 89:

B.B. King, whose scorching guitar licks and heartfelt vocals made him the idol of generations of musicians and fans while earning him the nickname King of the Blues, died late Thursday at home in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was 89.
King’s eldest surviving daughter, Shirley King of Chicago, Illinois, said she was upset that she didn’t have a chance to see her father before he died.
Although he had continued to perform well into his eighties, the fifteen-time Grammy winner suffered from diabetes and had been in declining health during the past year. He collapsed during a concert in Chicago in October of 2014, later blaming dehydration and exhaustion. He had been in hospice care at his Las Vegas home.
For most of a career spanning nearly seventy years, Riley B. King was not only the undisputed king of the blues but a mentor to scores of guitarists, including Eric Clapton, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall, and Keith Richards, he recorded more than fifty albums and toured the world well into his eighties, often performing nearly three hundred concerts a year.
King played a Gibson guitar he affectionately called Lucille, with a style that included beautifully crafted single-string runs punctuated by loud chords, subtle vibratos and bent notes. The result could bring chills to an audience, no more so than when King used it to full effect on his signature song, The Thrill is Gone (video, below). He would make his guitar shout and cry in anguish as he told the tale of forsaken love, then end with a guttural shouting of the final lines: “Now that it’s all over, all I can do is wish you well.”
His style was unusual. King didn’t like to sing and play at the same time, so he developed a call-and-response between him and Lucille. “Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said, to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more,” King told The Associated Press in 2006. “When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.”

Rico says the man lived a full life, contributed much to the world, and will be long remembered...