Showing results by author "Daniel de Visé" in All Categories

Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age 10, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker and encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark.

The Blues Brothers hit theatres on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage; but Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honour the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists.

Andy Griffith and Don Knotts met on Broadway in the 1950s. When Andy went to Hollywood to film a TV pilot about a small-town sheriff, Don called to ask if the sheriff could use a deputy. The comedic synergy between Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife ignited The Andy Griffith Show, elevating a folksy sitcom into a timeless study of human friendship, as potent off the screen as on.

La historia de The Blues Brothers [Granujas a todo ritmo en España], la comedia musical más popular del cine estadounidense de los ochenta, con John Belushi y Dan Aykroyd "No van a pillarnos", arenga Dan Aykroyd, enfundado en el papel de Elwood Blues, a su hermano Jake, inmortalizado por John Belushi. "Esta es una misión del Altísimo, Dios lo quiere". Así arranca la comedia musical de acción The Blues Brothers [Granujas a todo ritmo] que llegaría a la gran pantalla el 20 de junio de 1980, si bien del nacimiento de ambos personajes (1974) se cumple ahora el cincuentenario.

A las puertas del centenario, la biografía definitiva de B.B. King, considerado -y por muchos llamado- Rey (de reyes) del Blues. He aquí la más vibrante y completa semblanza del que fuera gran pionero y el último en partir de toda una generación de profetas del blues. Riley "Blues Boy" King (1925-2015), más conocido como B.B. King, nació en la más absoluta pobreza en el corazón del Misisipi afroamericano subyugado por la América de Jim Crow.