“You might want to play on the cleaner side of the tracks, but try cranking it up a little – it damn-near takes off”: Why Gibson’s B.B. King ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ 1974 ES-355 is a technical knockout
Gibson and B.B. King have had many Lucilles over the years but it is this one commemorating the King of the Blues' legendary Zaire the heavy-hitter we've been waiting for?
(Image credit: Future / Olly Curtis)
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.
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(Image credit: Future / Olly Curtis)
(Image credit: Future / Olly Curtis)
(Image credit: Future / Olly Curtis)
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.
(Image credit: Future / Olly Curtis)
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.
Dave Burrluck is one of the world’s most experienced guitar journalists, who started writing back in the '80s for International Musician and Recording World, co-founded The Guitar Magazine and has been the Gear Reviews Editor of Guitarist magazine for the past two decades. Along the way, Dave has been the sole author of The PRS Guitar Book and The Player's Guide to Guitar Maintenance as well as contributing to numerous other books on the electric guitar. Dave is an active gigging and recording musician and still finds time to make, repair and mod guitars, not least for Guitarist’s The Mod Squad.
