A quick guide to CHRISTONE “KINGFISH” INGRAM’S fiery blues lead style BY PHIL SHORT
TENTER CHRISTONE “KINGFISH” INGRAM. Kingfish — already a modern blues icon at 23 years old — displays a level of musical maturity far beyond his years, playing with tons of dynamics and delicious tone to boot. It’s clear that Kingfish is well studied in all the great blues players of previous generations, with a vocabulary that is rich in fundamental blues language.
But like all the best blues players, Kingfish has a wonderful ear for melody and rhythmic phrasing. He successfully makes this blues vocabulary all his own, with a particular knack for combining major and minor pentatonic phrasing in a way that sounds lyrical, vocal and natural.
Kingfish, who hails from Clarksdale, Mississippi, has already headlined several tours off the back of his Grammy-nominated, self-titled 2019 debut album and its 2021 follow-up, 662 — an astonishing achievement for such a young artist. As well as being an accomplished player, Kingfish is an excellent vocalist and storyteller — all important parts of a successful and relatable artist. In his early years, his unusual appreciation for the tradition of early blues and his natural musical talent led him to securing a strong local fanbase, even capturing the attention of seasoned pros like [B.B. King drummer] Tony Coleman.
In our two studies (see FIGURES 1 and 2), we explore two key aspects of Kingfish’s signature style — his mature grasp of combining minor and major pentatonic sounds with modal color tones and his fantastic control of dynamics, touch and expression. In FIGURE 1, we also get an example of his use of a chord shape for m7b5, also known as a half-diminished 7, which was often employed by old-school bluesmen like T-Bone Walker to superimpose a dominant 9th tonality when played from the 3rd of the underlying major or dominant 7th chord. You can hear Kingfish use this device across a wide range of his tracks and live performances.
A NOTE ON KINGFISH’S TONE
Kingfish can be seen using a few different guitars, and he equally switches between Teles, Strats and LP-style axes. He also favors fairly heavy-gauge strings, using .11-.49s in standard tuning, to help give him a wider range of dynamics and a thick, warm tone. He prefers clean-tone, non-master-volume amps, using higher-gain overdrive pedals for his overdrive sounds. Push the mids and keep the gain relatively high for this lesson’s solos.
FIGURE 1
THIS STUDY, PLAYED over a funky groove in the key of E, emulates
