Christone "Kingfish" Ingram: "There’s a lot wrong with the blues genre right now – a lot of people don’t think about the history and the significance of the actual culture"

Christone Kingfish Ingram
(Image credit: Paul Natkin/Getty Images)

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, the 22-year-old heir to the Delta blues crown, is holding court with fans in Indianola, Mississippi, where he and nearly a dozen other guitarists are paying tribute to the “Blues Boy” himself, native son B.B. King.

After stepping off the stage strapped to a cherry red Gibson ES-335, he makes his way through the crowd and stops to serenade a young fan with a gentle phrase worthy of tonight’s honoree. 

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Jim Beaugez

Jim Beaugez has written about music for Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Guitar World, Guitar Player and many other publications. He created My Life in Five Riffs, a multimedia documentary series for Guitar Player that traces contemporary artists back to their sources of inspiration, and previously spent a decade in the musical instruments industry.