The Great B.b. King

Recorded in Cannes France 1983. An amazing live recording of B.B. King. Some of his best versions of songs are on this disc. Like the ever so sweet guitar playing on "You Know I Love You". Or "Caldonia" with the altered break parts with gives the whole song a heavier groove and B.B. a chance to really sing out loud. A really good and in some ways forgotten record.

This impressive, impeccably packaged four-CD box set focuses solely on B.B. King's 1950s and 1960s recordings for the Modern family of labels. That was a period that basically encompassed the vast majority of his work prior to 1962, though he did a few non-Modern sides before signing with ABC Paramount in early 1962 and did a few other sides for Modern in the mid-'60s. So this is basically a box-set overview of King's early career, one that saw him score many R&B hits and build a career as a blues legend, even as the blues were falling out of fashion in favor of rock and soul. As many tracks as there are here - 106 in all, four of them previously unreleased - this isn't a catchall roundup of everything the prolific King did for the label…

Although Live & Well wasn't a landmark album in the sense of Live at the Regal, it was a significant commercial breakthrough for King, as it was the first of his LPs to enter the Top 100. That may have been because recognition from rock stars such as Eric Clapton had finally boosted his exposure to the White pop audience, but it was a worthy recording on its own merits, divided evenly between live and studio material. King's always recorded well as a live act, and it's the concert tracks that shine brightest, although the studio ones (cut with assistance from studio musicians like Al Kooper and Hugh McCracken) aren't bad.

Although Live & Well wasn't a landmark album in the sense of Live at the Regal, it was a significant commercial breakthrough for King, as it was the first of his LPs to enter the Top 100. That may have been because recognition from rock stars such as Eric Clapton had finally boosted his exposure to the White pop audience, but it was a worthy recording on its own merits, divided evenly between live and studio material. King's always recorded well as a live act, and it's the concert tracks that shine brightest, although the studio ones (cut with assistance from studio musicians like Al Kooper and Hugh McCracken) aren't bad.

Although Live & Well wasn't a landmark album in the sense of Live at the Regal, it was a significant commercial breakthrough for King, as it was the first of his LPs to enter the Top 100. That may have been because recognition from rock stars such as Eric Clapton had finally boosted his exposure to the White pop audience, but it was a worthy recording on its own merits, divided evenly between live and studio material. King's always recorded well as a live act, and it's the concert tracks that shine brightest, although the studio ones (cut with assistance from studio musicians like Al Kooper and Hugh McCracken) aren't bad.

Although Live & Well wasn't a landmark album in the sense of Live at the Regal, it was a significant commercial breakthrough for King, as it was the first of his LPs to enter the Top 100. That may have been because recognition from rock stars such as Eric Clapton had finally boosted his exposure to the White pop audience, but it was a worthy recording on its own merits, divided evenly between live and studio material. King's always recorded well as a live act, and it's the concert tracks that shine brightest, although the studio ones (cut with assistance from studio musicians like Al Kooper and Hugh McCracken) aren't bad.

Originally released in 1958 by the budget-priced Crown label, The Blues collected a dozen sides B.B. King cut for RPM and Kent between 1951 and 1958…

It's been so long since B.B. King stepped outside of his comfort zone that One Kind Favor comes as a bit of a shock. Unlike so many albums he's cut in the wake of the crossover success of The Thrill Is Gone way back in 1970, the sound is stripped-back, not splashy, there is not a reliance on guest stars, and the repertoire is pure blues - and these are all songs that he's never recorded before, including three tunes by his longtime idol Lonnie Johnson. Credit for the concept must be given to producer T Bone Burnett, who applies a similar neo-rootsy aesthetic to One Kind Favor that he did to his production of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' Raising Sand - an approach that's grounded in tradition but has a smoky, smeary veneer that's thoroughly modern…