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Some artists will never retire. Take 84-year-old B.B. King: The Beale Street Blues Boy already has 37 events booked for 2010, two years after an impressive album, One Kind Favor. While he sits while he performs now, King can still sing and still make Lucille, his Gibson electric, wail 12-bar blues. While others play too many frantic notes, this Mississippi-born legend knows when to pause and when to rock his hands and bend the strings, creating his patented dramatic, note-stretching vibrato. King’s 73-year-old opening act, singer-guitarist Buddy Guy, is best known lately for calling Eric Clapton’s T-Mobile phone in a commercial, but this Chicago-based artist employs more gaudy, show-off tricks than King. However, on 2001’s Sweet Tea, recorded in Mississippi, he kept it simple—no duets with rock stars, just raw, buzzing, plugged-in work and heartfelt acoustic strumming.
KING AND GUY PERFORM AT 8 P.M. AT D.A.R. CONSTITUTION HALL, 1776 D ST. NW. $70. (202) 638-2661.