B B King said he can’t express his gratitude enough to Alcoholics Anonymous for helping him kick the bottle. ‘Goddadmit, I was fucked-up good n proper,’ said the original Black Blues man from Mississippi, ‘but a couple of sessions with the AA dudes soon done sort me out real good.’
‘Big Bastard’ King, as he is known amongst his close friends, has been bending and vibrating the same six steel strings for over forty decades, expressing his dissatisfaction with a lifetime of drink and drugs, and his frustrations with loose women and gambling losses. ‘But hey,’ he said, beaming on TV to promote his new single, ‘that’s all behind me now, man.’
King’s latest album is a compilation of jaunty pop songs. 'The title track Happiness is an upbeat reworking of the Ken Dodd classic and track 3 – Woke Up This Morning Feeling Really Joyful – is a truly light-hearted song,’ commented the New Musical Express; ‘but our favourite has to be the final track My Baby She Done Make Me A Nice Cup Of Bedtime Cocoa.’
Despite the turnaround in his psychological frame of mind, King will always be remembered for the severe hangover he suffered after a whisky-fuelled crawl around a dozen pubs in Memphis in 1873, from which he coined the phrase ‘The 12 Bar Blues’.
In other news this week, famous rapper Big Daddy Kane was forced to admit he wants to learn how to talk properly after he was spotted in a speech therapist’s waiting room.
