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RARE PHOTOS: Albert king - The Real Truth

“It’s not a guitar where you grab the strings and bend them, Albert King-style. I tried twice and broke two strings!” Derek Trucks on the challenge of playing Jerry Garcia’s Tiger

The 14lbs beast needed some taming, and it taught Trucks a valuable history lesson

Guitar World

“I think it’s hard for blues artists to get endorsement deals… but hey, if someone at Guild is reading this, give me a call!” Larry McCray on his Albert King-inspired Flying V, touring with Gary Moore and his life in three guitars

The blues comeback king tells his life story via the medium of three guitars that he can’t live without

Guitar World

“I was 28 or something and he was 80. He’s like, ‘Here, son, this is how you do it.’ How sad is that?” Joe Bonamassa on the time BB King taught him how to use an iPod (and what made him blues guitar’s GOAT)

Bonamassa pays tribute to the undisputed king of the blues as a road dog who "knew everything" and was pretty handy with newfangled technologies, too

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“There was a big snowstorm. The governor asked him to postpone the show. He wouldn’t do it. He goes, ‘I told them I’m going to be here and I’m here’”: Joe Bonamassa on his friendship with the ultimate bluesman, B.B. King – and paying the ultimate tribute

B.B. King would have celebrated his 100th birthday in September last year. But when Joe Bonamassa discovered that the centenary was going almost unnoticed, he swung into action

Guitar World

“Albert King took me aside. He said, ‘The biggest thing about music is you can’t play what people want you to play.’ My dad said that, too”: Bernard Allison grew up surrounded by blues legends – and hid the fact he was learning guitar for years

Luther Allison’s son played with Stevie Ray Vaughan for his 16th birthday, toured in a band where pedals were forbidden, and achieved his ambition of being in his father’s band, and even leading it

Guitar World

“He snuck in without people realizing. The only giveaway was the white feather tail in his hat”: How Stevie Ray Vaughan gave Bernard Allison the surprise of his life at his 16th birthday gig

Allison thought he’d lost the chance to jam with his hero, then he noticed a tour bus passing the venue

Guitar World

“The night he died, I was at Buddy Guy’s club waiting for Buddy, Stevie and Clapton. Then we were told they’d all gone down”: Larry McCray on rubbing shoulders with blues royalty and playing through Joe Bonamassa’s epic rig

Living blues legend Larry McCray is keeping on keeping on and keeping the blues alive, and on his latest LP, Heartbreak City, he's taking his guitar to places his voice can't reach

Guitar World

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“Albert King once advised Gary Moore to ‘play every other note’”: Why keeping it simple can improve your blues solos

Peter Green, George Harrison, Gary Moore, David Gilmour... These are just some of the players inspiring this lesson in stylistic restraint, all in the pursuit of the blues

Guitar World

“When Iheard that, my first thought was, ‘Well, you can’t do that on a piano!’” Jared James Nichols teaches an essential guitar playing skill – how to bend the strings expressively

A set of electric guitar strings is no match for the bicep-curling, iron-pumping purveyor of blues power. He shows us how he makes his guitar scream

Guitar World

“Iasked Eric, ‘Can I play them?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, ofcourse.’ So he went home and I had full licence to play his guitars”: Stephen Dale Petit on break-ups, cancer, Eric Clapton and why the original “blues hooligan” is no gun-for-hire

Grave illness and a broken heart have tested Stephen Dale Petit – but the bluesman tells us that completing his Clapton-bolstered masterpiece, Be The Love, is all that matters

Guitar World

"He made his point known in a way that scared this guy half to death": Eric Gales' new album pays tribute to the man whose music he grew up with - his brother

Blues star Eric Gales on his record for his late brother, cutting heads with Joe Bonamassa and surviving time behind bars

Louder

“He screams across from the bar, ‘What you doing, boy! Put that guitar down. Nobody knows my tuning!’” Journey’s Neal Schon on that one time he tried Albert King’s mythical Gibson Flying V

Schon cut his teeth playing the blues and jamming with some of the genre’s greats – including Albert King

Guitar World

“He had Double Trouble on a couple of his records. He had a relationship with Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was a touring machine who did it the hard way”: Eric Gales on his all-star blues tribute to his brother, the man who started him on guitar

With a stirring tribute to his older brother Manuel, who performed as Little Jimmy King, the master southpaw returns with one of thefinest albums of his career

Guitar World

“You lit a fire under this genre”: Joe Bonamassa trades licks with “the future” of the blues, Marcus King, during virtuosic Albert King cover

Bonamassa invited the 29-year-old blues sensation on stage during his headline show on the Keeping The Blues Alive At Sea Alaska cruise

Guitar World

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Guitar World

“A George Benson, or John Mayer, or B.B. King, or Albert King solo, you can almost sing it”: Isaiah Sharkey on what he learned about guitar soloing – after playing with the likes of John Mayer, D'Angelo and Paul Simon

The singer-songwriter and sideman to the stars insists it all starts with “taking the ego out of it”

Guitar World

“Those tubes need to be burning. As I put it to the band, I like to smell dinner cooking”: With his gourmet phrasing and R&B hot sauce, D.K. Harrell is the blues hero you need in your life right now

The Louisiana phenom comes from the less-is-more school of blues that B.B. King came from, and you might want to keep that King comparison in mind when listening to Harrell's latest album

Guitar World

“One of my biggest musical influences is the king of blues power. He also played in an unorthodox tuning, which is still a mystery”: Jared James Nichols on how Albert King's electric fingerpicking changed the game for blues guitar

Albert King played upside down, in a weird tuning, and influenced SRV and Hendrix alike, and he did it without a pick. So it's no surprise Nichols is a huge fan – he breaks down King's magic

Guitar World

“We don’t know how much time any of us has, so while you have the opportunity, you should give it a shot”: Eric Gales taps Buddy Guy to pay tribute to his older brother – a forgotten hero of blues guitar

A Tribute to LJK celebrates the life and legacy of Gales' brother, Manuel Gales, aka Little Jimmy King, and features guest spots from Joe Bonamassa, Josh Smith, and Christone "Kingfish" Ingram

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Louder

"After I saw him live I wanted to give up playing the guitar. It took me about a year to get over that": This is the soundtrack of Robin Trower's life

Blues lifer Robin Trower picks his records, artists and gigs of lasting significance, and names his favourite Robin Trower album (Hint: It's not Bridge Of Sighs)

Guitar World

“The guitar that I used on my first album cost me $20, and I got a good sound out of it. It's what you put into the guitar that counts”: He collaborated with Johnny Winter, and was covered by Phish. Son Seals is essential listening for any blues guitarist

A master of gritty, blue-collar blues, Seals was a Chicago guitar icon. Here, he discusses his beloved Guild Starfire, and why blues guitarists need to remember to keep things fun

Guitar World

“The good news is it was recorded – you can go online and see it. The bad news is that’s because someone stole all the master tapes”: Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter on his supergroup with Joe Walsh, sessions with Joni Mitchell and the voices of Albert King

The session great discusses being hand-picked by Gene Simmons, fitting in with James Brown, creating classic solos for Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, and Frankenstein acts on most of his guitars

Louder

The best new rock songs you need to hear right now

Featuring Marcus King, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Bernie Marsden and five other sailors on the seven seas of rock

Guitar World

“Chuck Berry's not a very good guitar player. He's a clown. He runs all over the guitar, just like any one of these old rock players would do, and makes no sense”: Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown pulled no punches when speaking about his fellow guitar heroes

In a 1992 sit-down with GW, the late blues guitar pioneer offered remarkably frank assessments of some of his sacrosanct peers – among them Chuck Berry, B.B. and Freddie King, and T-Bone Walker

Guitar World

“I wanted to play more, and it was inappropriate with Eric or Roger. I was not the lead guitarist, and I wanted to be”: Clapton, Waters, Satriani and me – Andy Fairweather Low on his greatest collaborations and finally taking center stage

As pop idol, hit-making solo artist, and with the most star-studded CV of any sideman, the affable Welshman offers up his latest release, The Invisible Bluesman, and reflects on his storied career

Louder

“A really painful song about how hard it is to lose friends. When I sing it, I think of John Belushi”: We asked Blues Brothers star Dan Aykroyd to give us his 11 favourite blues records, and he delivered

John Lee Hooker, Albert King, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells - Blues Brothers and former SNL icon Dan Aykroyd knows his blues

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