You would have to search far and wide – perhaps in the honeycomb of caves along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border – to find someone unfamiliar with B.B. King.
The blues guitarist, who will turn a ripe old 82 on Sept. 16, is the embodiment of his genre. His impact on contemporary music, popular or otherwise, is so vast that measuring it seems pointless. King has been playing his songs longer than most of us have been alive, starting out at Memphis radio station WDIA in 1948 and exploding from there.
Almost more than any other musician, he justifies the oft-overused term “living legend.”
But when King visits Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Saturday as part of his Blues Festival with Al Green and Etta James, he will illustrate why the “living” part nearly overshadows the “legend.”
King is one of dozens of older artists showing the younger set how it’s done. By the time his tour ends in March, he will have played 45 dates in nearly ever corner of the country.
At 82 years old.
“It ain’t how fast you play, it’s what you play,” said Dick Dale, the King of Surf Rock. “For instance, B.B. King can play three notes and it’s a whole paragraph, and that’s the difference.”
Much has been made of the graying of baby boomers, how it represents a cultural shift as people remain vigorously active into their 50s and 60s – a break from parochial attitudes about aging.
But these older musicians make people in their 50s look like pimply teenagers. Consider Les Paul, “The Wizard of Waukesha,” pioneer of the electric guitar, multitrack recording and reverb effects. At 92, he’s not only performing, but touring and jamming with protégés like Steve Miller. He still plays every Monday at the Iridium Jazz Club in Manhattan.
“We must all own up that without Les Paul, generations of flash little punks like us would be in jail or cleaning toilets,” the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards said on Paul’s website.
He’s not alone.
Devoutly Christian crooner Charlie Louvin, 80, played the hipster-laden South by Southwest and Bonnaroo music festivals this year between dates on his national jaunt, which led him through Denver and Boulder. The surviving half of the influential Louvin Brothers country duo also released a collaborative CD with a thick crop of indie artists, some of them a third his age.
Why – and how – does he do it?
“I have a good time doing what I do because I love it. I’ve been able to send enough money home that my wife raised three good boys,” Louvin said. “If you’re good at your occupation, there’s a price to pay, of course. All the (traveling) was hard on the wife at home.”
Country, blues and jazz
The older artists that continue to tour in the spotlight fit mostly into three genres: country, blues and jazz. Names like Louvin, Loretta Lynn (72), Willie Nelson (74), Merle Haggard (70) and Kris Kristofferson (71) represent country; King, James (69), Pinetop Perkins (94) and famously flamboyant guitarist Buddy Guy (71) rep the blues; artists like jazz saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman (74) lead the way with jazz.
“Jazz and blues are a different way of approaching music in the first place,” said Jeff Tamarkin, associate editor of Jazz Times and an adviser to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Grammys. “Look at (jazz drummer) Max Roach, who just died at 83. There was no reason he couldn’t have been performing as long as he wanted to.”
Granted, some artists – like King – are forced to sit or otherwise restrict their movement at concerts for health reasons. But it’s all the more amazing when they continue doing their signature tricks, and doing them well.
Steve Miller remembers bringing Buddy Guy on tour with him in the ’60s and ’70s. Guy used his 200-foot-long guitar chord to enter the crowd while playing.
“The first time I ever saw Buddy and Junior Wells, you could see the rhythm section playing on the stage, and you could hear Buddy and Junior playing, but couldn’t see them,” Miller said. “The schtick that night was that they were in the bathroom.”
Indeed, when Guy played Red Rocks Amphitheatre in June, he used his wireless guitar connection to stroll through the crowd, playing solos so ear-splitting they rivaled a Slayer concert. Guy, 71, didn’t appear to break a sweat as he climbed the stairs in the upper reaches of the 6,200-foot elevation venue.
“I could play all night!” he yelled from the stage, pushing back headliner George Thorogood’s performance by several minutes because he nearly did.
Embarrassing in tights
Of course, certain stage tricks are inarguably a young person’s game, like writhing in broken glass, as Iggy Pop used to do in the Stooges. It’s easy to look foolish while trying to seem more spry than you are (witness Debbie Harry’s embarrassing set at Red Rocks in June as part of the True Colors tour).
“I think it has to do with integrity and the kind of respect you give your music and audience,” said Jazz Times’ Tamarkin. “Mick Jagger should have hung it up years ago, whereas somebody like Bob Dylan doesn’t have to because he’s adjusted what he does to his age level. He’s not running around the stage prancing, he’s doing what a 66-year-old Dylan should be doing.”
Knowing when to hang it up helps preserve an artist’s legacy, but some just can’t stomach singing the same radio hit over and over again. Tamarkin notes that fans of Jefferson Airplane and Starship gave Grace Slick grief for retiring in 1989.
“She felt the rock ‘n’ roll stage was not a place for old people,” said Tamarkin, who wrote the Jefferson Airplane biography “Got a Revolution!” “On the one hand it depends on the old person, but on the other hand people like Steve Perry (of Aerosmith) just look ridiculous on stage. Whereas people like Neil Young and Elvis Costello have adjusted what they do over time.”
Tamarkin was particularly horrified by the “re-formed” New York Dolls tour, which featured only two original members of the influential proto-punk act.
“(Singer) David Johansen came out with these pink tights on,” Tamarkin said. “It looks great when you’re 25, but it looked really silly on a 57-year-old man.”
Clean living
Dick Dale, best known for his reverb-laden surf epic “Misirlou,” has seen the peaks and valleys of the music industry in his 70 years.
“I know what it’s like to wash my clothes in a Chevron station,” Dale said from his California home.
These days the King of Surf Rock, who first scored hits in the early ’60s, is busier and more popular than ever, sometimes playing to crowds in the tens of thousands at outdoor festivals in Madrid and Berlin.
“We just did 39 concerts in 42 days,” Dale said of a recent national jaunt.
A quick peek at his tour roster backs him up. Dale asserted that he manages to play so often at age 70 because he avoids rock-star clichés like heavy drinking or drug use (believe it or not, Kiss’ Gene Simmons is the same way).
“I’ve been in the martial arts since my teens, I’ve never had a drug in my body, I haven’t eaten red meat for 39 years, I drink my daily tea from the rain forest, and I’ve never put alcohol in my body,” Dale said.
His shows continue to display an impressive energy and sharpness, never using a set list, often posing dramatically on stage like a shaman.
“When I played with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings in Vegas, the guys used to go, ‘Dick, cut it out, man! You’re moving around too much on this stage. You’re making us look bad!’
“I’ve never followed a list in my life, and that’s probably what has created so much nervous energy in my body.
“My mind never left 20, because once it does, that’s when you start to die,” Dale said. “I’d like to die on stage in one big explosion with body parts flying everywhere.”
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
B.B. King Blues Festival
BLUES/SOUL | Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 18300 W. Alameda Parkway in Morrison; 7:30 p.m. Saturday, with Al Green and Etta James | $49-$89 | 303-830-8497 or
