It was a good night for the blues at Monday’s Grammy Awards, with Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, and Jon Cleary taking home awards for best blues album (Born to Play Guitar), best American roots performance (“See That My Grave is Kept Clean” off her Your Good Fortune album), and best regional roots music album (Go Go Juice), respectively.
But perhaps the biggest thrill of the night was the tribute to the late, great B.B. King (who won 15 Grammy awards of his own during his career, including best traditional blues album for, among others, Live at the Apollo, Blues Summit, Blues on the Bayou, Riding with the King, A Christmas Celebration of Hope, and his last, in 2008, for One Kind Favor) that came late in the program, with Gary Clark Jr. and frequent Grammy honoree Bonnie Raitt joined by country singer and the night’s winner in both the best country album and best country performance categories Chris Stapleton on King’s iconic “The Thrill is Gone”, the song for which King received his very first Grammy (for best R&B vocal performance) in 1970.
Watch the trio wish The King of the Blues well with this dynamite performance, which also features a nice video montage of King for a backdrop: