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I’m pretty sure that if he hadn’t had those injuries that we’d talk about him in the way we talk about someone like Rocco Prestia or Chuck Rain-ey.

Although I’m not a fan of BB King particularly, this album is well worth getting hold of (as well as the ‘sister’ album Live And Well) to sample what Jerry was doing with B.B. King.

King’s version of The Thrill Is Gone is a slowish (around 86 BPM) 12 bar blues in the key of B minor. Jerry’s approach through the different cho-ruses of the tune is to play essentially the same line with some minor variations. We’re going to look at the intro chorus, verse 1 and verse 2 and the outro in this tutorial.

If you’re playing this song live with your band then there is definitely space to add in some more variations - but note the lesson from Jerry’s bass line that the main rhythm and melodic motif is repeated without much variation because it creates an almost hypnotic feel in the bass line.

Here’s the intro 12 bar:

The next tutorial we’re going to look at the main parts of the bass line to The Thrill is Gone by BB King.

Now the bass was played on this by Jerry Jemmott and I’ve been listening to a lot of Jerry’s classic late 60s and early 70s bass lines. What you may not know is that Jerry suffered serious injuries in a car crash whilst on tour with Roberta Flack and was never the same bass player afterwards.

THE THRILL IS GONE by B.B.KING

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Here’s Verse 1 - note how similar it is to the intro:

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Here’s Verse 2:

Finally here’s the outro where the chords just ‘vamp’ on the Bm:

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HOW TO PROGRAM THE DIFFERENT SECTIONS IN BAND IN A BOX

1. Set the key to Bm

2. Aim for a performance tempo of 85 BPM

3. Choose a style to play with. For a band style, I used the Slow Even 8th Blues (85 BPM) real styles. And there’s also the chordal metronome built into BIAB 2015 and 2016.

4. Mute the bass.

Here’s what the main 12 bar chord cycle looks like when programmed:

You can repeat this as many times as you need. For the outro section you just need to repeat the Bm chord - again, as many times as you need!