For as long as I’ve been able to play the guitar, BB King has been my favourite guitar player. There’s something about his style which manages to capture the joy and misery of the blues in one note. And the way he wrings the neck of his beloved Lucille to extract every last ounce of vibrato and sustain from it is sensational.
I’ve been lucky enough to see him live twice. On the first occasion, at the Edinburgh Playhouse in 1989, the theatre was absolutely jumping. Everyone was dancing by the end and there was a couple in front of us who looked they were having a particularly good time.
The Epiphone Riviera is a hollow-body electric guitar, based closely on the Gibson E335 and originally manufactured between 1962 and 1969. It has a maple side and top, one-piece set mahogany neck, and a rosewood fretboard with trapezoidal pearl inlays.
The Sheraton was one of the first Epiphone electric guitars to be made following the purchase of the company by Gibson, appearing a year after the Casino in 1959. The Epiphone Sheraton is a double-cut thinline, semi-hollow-bodied guitar with twin humbuckers.