B.b. King Live & Well

There are both good and bad points to this CD. Of the latter, the Phillip Morris "Super Band" is confined to background work with - other than a few spots for Plas Johnson's tenor - no soloists being heard from. As an ensemble, the all-star orchestra performs well, but is essentially anonymous. Also, despite the backing, B.B. King does not attempt to play jazz, a wasted opportunity. But, switching to the good points, Live at the Apollo is an excellent example of a strong B.B. King live performance. Somehow he always makes his combination of blues and familiar hits sound fresh. With a liberal amount of space set aside for his guitar solos, B.B. is in top form throughout the well-paced set, which is far superior to most of his overproduced studio sessions for MCA. Even if the big band is mostly irrelevant, this CD is recommended for B.B. King's singing and playing.

B.B. King has cut a lot of albums since the success of Live at the Regal. And, like the live shows they document, none of them are any less than solid and professional, hallmarks of King's work aesthetic. But every so often B.B. truly catches fire; his playing and singing comes up an extra notch or two, and the result is a live album with some real sparks to it. Live in Cook County Jail is one of those great concerts that the record company was smart enough to be there to capture, documenting B.B. firing on all cylinders in front of an audience that's just damn happy for him to be there. Possibly the best live version of "The Thrill Is Gone" of all its many incarnations, and rock solid renditions of classics like "Everyday I Have the Blues," "How Blue Can You Get?," "Sweet Sixteen" and a great medley of "3 O'Clock Blues" and "Darlin' You Know I Love You"…

Prison performances are sort of a standard for blues singers, and it just doesn't get any better than this - B.B. King playing his classics live at the San Quentin Correctional facility. Here King is playing to a truly captive audience offering up such classics as "The Thrill is Gone," "Sweet 16," "In the Heat of the Night," and "Nobody Loves Me But My Mother." In the intro to that last selection King explains to the inmates that while the blues was not just about hard times, some of the tunes could be pretty depressing. "Some of it can be pretty down alley. Like I'm fixing to do right now. I'm going all the way down to the bottom." Yet he also encourages the audience to go on and boogie off some of the uptempo tracks. This is music from the heart, and you can just feel the soul of the artist…

Riley B. King, known professionally as B.B. King, was an American blues singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. He introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending, shimmering vibrato and staccato picking that influenced many later blues electric guitar players.

Universally hailed as the reigning king of the blues, the legendary B.B. King is without a doubt the single most important electric guitarist of the last half century…