The ZZ Top guitarist and singer Billy Gibbons was born in Houston, Texas back in 1949 and started his musical career in 1967, having the chance to be Jimi Hendrix’s opening act, when the band he was a member, The Moving Sidewalks, opened for the late legendary guitarist.
But obviously, Gibbons became one of the most influential guitarists and frontmen of all time as part of the power trio ZZ Top. On the road for almost six decades, the musician had the chance to see many incredible artists performing and he once revealed who is his favorite guitarist.
The guitarist that Billy Gibbons said is his favorite one
ZZ Top is a band that mixes Blues with Hard Rock, so Gibbons was heavily influenced by Blues guitarists and as he said in an interview with Classic Rock, the late legendary B.B. King was his favorite one.
“My favorite guitarist is BB King. BB’s distinctive, one-note style, his sustain and attack, that kinda call-and-response thing between the vocals and the solos… He was taken for granted, which means he’s underrated. Obviously he was a maestro entertainer, rather than a blues purist, though he could to that too. He was a former cotton-picker but he remained so self-effacing, plus he had a great sense of humor, lyrically and in life. He had class,” Billy Gibbons said.
When Gibbons was born in 1949, B.B. King already was a musician for seven years. He was active from 1942 until his death in 2015 at the age of 89. A prolific songwriter, King released simply 43 studio albums and 16 live albums.
They were good friends and had the opportunity to play together live many times over the decades.
The important advice B.B. King gave him
Gibbons is one of the most important Blues Rock guitarists of all time and he recalled in an interview with Sweetwater that B.B. King once told him to change the kind of strings he used. “Early on, I’ve got the privilege of sharing a dressing room with BB King upon which he said, ‘Hey, do you mind if I have a few strums on your guitar?’”
“Well, at the time, I was thinking to get the big, bad, loud sounds from the blues guys. You had to have super heavy strings, and it just took one or two strums and BB looked at me kind of quizzically and he said, ‘Why are you working so hard?’”
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘What exactly does that mean?’ And he said, ‘Well, these strings are so heavy.’ I said, ‘Well, isn’t that what you need to get the big, bad sound?’ He said, ‘No, back in the day, when there was only one set of strings available, the Black Diamond, one gauge, we used to do a trick. We used to have to throw away the big E string, move everything down one, and then borrow a banjo string to make a light gauge set.’”
He continued:
“But then along comes Jimmy Dunlop from Dunlop Manufacturing. He accepted the challenge to make something lighter than the lightest gauge up until recently, was 0.008. That was a Super Slinky on the high end. Now we have Rev. Willy’s Mexican Lottery Brand, .007 strings. If you really want to squeeze them out, grab a set of these things.”