ByDon

Dear Friends,

New data from Piper Jaffray’s teen survey show that Apple is dominating that market at least as far as mobile devices are concerned. They have 71% of the teen market for smart watches and almost 70% for iPhones and 64% for iPad. Another survey has Apple Mac sales showing positive growth while literally the entire PC market is in decline.

I have been playing around with Amazon’s Echo and I have to say that I like it a lot. I wake up each morning and say “Alexa, what’s new?” and I get the news reports from NPR, CNN, Huffington Post and BBC as well as ESPN Sports and the local weather report. During the day, I ask Alexa to “play the blues” or “play some classical music” and while the speaker is not as good as my Sonos system it does fill the room. I can be around the corner or across the room and the Echo can hear me. Apple needs to step it up a bit and get Siri on the Mac or even better yet, integrated into their networking gear. I would love to be able to tell my Sonos app to play my music from my iTunes library!

Speaking of networking here’s a Kibbles & Bytes exclusive! This isn’t for everyone but if you have a big house and your Wi-Fi signal isn’t reaching that far corner of the house this could solve three problems for you! I am bundling the Apple Factory Refurbished 3TB Time Capsule with an Apple Factory Refurbished Airport Express. Both have the same 1-year Apple warranty as new but you can save some bucks. The 3TB Time Capsule gives you the Airport Extreme wireless access point and automatic wireless back-ups to the integrated 3 terabyte drive. The Airport Express allows you to extend that wireless network. Normally this bundle is around $500 new, but this week for Kibbles & Bytes readers, while supplies last you can buy this refurbished bundle for only $325.99!

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  • B.B. King – The King of the Blues

    For more than half a century, Riley B. King – better known as B.B. King – defined the blues for a worldwide audience. Since he started recording in the 1940s, he has released over fifty albums, many of them classics. He was born September 16, 1925, on a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, near Indianola. In his youth, he played on street corners for dimes, and would sometimes play in as many as four towns a night. In 1947, he hitchhiked to Memphis, TN to pursue his music career. Memphis was where every important musician of The South gravitated, and it supported a large musical community where every style of African American music could be found. B.B. stayed with his cousin Bukka White, one of the most celebrated blues performers of his time, who schooled B.B. further in the art of the blues.

    B.B.’s first big break came in 1948 when he performed on Sonny Boy Williamson’s radio program on KWEM out of West Memphis. This led to steady engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis, and later to a ten-minute spot on black-staffed and managed Memphis radio station WDIA. “King’s Spot,” became so popular, it was expanded and became the “Sepia Swing Club.” Soon B.B. needed a catchy radio name. What started out as Beale Street Blues Boy was shortened to Blues Boy King, and eventually B.B. King.

    In the mid-1950s, while B.B. was performing at a dance in Twist, Arkansas, a few fans became unruly. Two men got into a fight and knocked over a kerosene stove, setting fire to the hall. B.B. raced outdoors to safety with everyone else, then realized that he left his beloved $30 acoustic guitar inside, so he rushed back inside the burning building to retrieve it, narrowly escaping death. When he later found out that the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, he decided to give the name to his guitar to remind him never to do a crazy thing like fight over a woman. Ever since, each one of B.B.’s trademark Gibson guitars has been called Lucille.

    B.B. was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He received NARAS’ Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 1987, and has received honorary doctorates from Tougaloo(MS) College in 1973; Yale University in 1977; Berklee College of Music in 1982; Rhodes College of Memphis in 1990; Mississippi Valley State University in 2002 and Brown University in 2007. In 1992, he received the National Award of Distinction from the University of Mississippi.

    B.B. King came to Vermont many times and I had the pleasure of being at several of his concerts. He died last year at the age of 90 and was performing to sold out crowds right up until he died. B.B. King is gone but the –The Thrill is Gone- lives forever.