Think of the late, great B.B. King and a picture of his famous ‘Lucille’-model Gibson with its ES Artist-type sealed body will likely come to mind, although these didn’t actually appear in Standard and Custom versions until 1980.
Before then, B.B. had long plied his high-profile trade, invariably with a standard ES model and typically the 355. Currently, Gibson Custom has a Lucille Legacy and ‘Live at the Regal’ ES-335 in the catalogue, and now this latest historic homage from 1974 has joined the ranks.
The ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ pulls in another couple of heavyweights, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, unquestionably rockstars of their day, and a mega-profile boxing match in Kinshasa, Zaire on 30 October 1974, known as one of the greatest sporting events of the 20th century.
The fight was scheduled to happen on 25 September at the end of Zaire 74, a three-day music festival, but it was delayed due to Foreman injuring himself in a sparring session.
The festival went ahead as planned, featuring B.B. King, James Brown, Miriam Makeba, Bill Withers, The Crusaders and more, and is documented in 2008’s Soul Power, plus B.B.’s Live In Africa film. It’s the guitar B.B. King was playing back then that’s replicated here.
As we very carefully pull this model from its accompanying case, you’d almost believe it was 50 years old with its light ageing.
There are plenty of cracks to the body lacquer, which has an old-looking amber tint; this turns the edge binding nicotine yellow with the notable exception of the white binding around the tortoiseshell pickguard. There’s also a little patina and ageing to the gold hardware.
These are big guitars, though this one is attractively manageable, with its relatively slim neck. It’s not over-wide in lower positions, but it really fills out to quite a full-shouldered girth by the 12th fret. The light rolling to the ’board edge binding adds to the feeling of age, too.
Despite the ‘Stereo’ truss rod cover, thankfully the output is mono here, and we have the additional five flavours of the Varitone, which get a little thinner and almost phasey-sounding as you play through them.
The pickups seem only lightly potted (you get plenty of pick ‘clonk’ if you hit the covers), but these hybrid T-Types sound extremely sweet and yet have good articulation and quite widely contrasting voices between the bite at the bridge and the smoother, clear neck voice.
You might want to play on the cleaner side of the tracks, but try cranking it up a little – it damn-near takes off!
- Priced $9,999/£8,999, the B.B. King 'Rumble in the Jungle' 1974 ES-355 is available now. See Gibson for more details.
