Better Not Look Down

This 1979 effort finds B.B. interpreting a number of pop-blues tunes, many of them co-written by Will Jennings and co-producer Joe Sample, with King co-writing two of the songs aboard. Even with a large, contemporary backdrop (including a seven-piece horn section and female backup singers), there's still plenty of room for B.B.'s stinging guitar and stentorian vocals in the mix. Highlights include the gospel-tinged "Better Not Look Down," "Same Old Story (Same Old Song)," "Happy Birthday Blues," "The Beginning of the End" and the title track. As one of B.B.'s more pop-oriented offerings, this succeeds admirably.

Around this time in their heyday, the Crusaders were experimenting with orchestral/jazz fusions in concert – and MCA thought enough of them to capture the music in London's Royal Festival Hall one fine summer. Crusader pianist/sparkplug Joe Sample evidently arranged and orchestrated all of the Royal Philharmonic's parts himself, not necessarily with the expertise of a full-time practitioner of the craft. Too often, the orchestrations are piled on with a shovel; the orchestral "Overture" is a particularly mawkish piece of work.

Funny, we can’t remember so many singers turning up on the Crusaders’ albums, but look a little closer at the liner. For this 1987 compilation—designed, perhaps, to fill the gap between albums by a group that no longer was a full-time act—MCA reached for records by B.B. King, Tina Turner, Joe Sample, and Wilton Felder that various Crusaders played on, as well as the band’s output from Street Life through The Good and Bad Times. B.B. takes the prize for his fabulous, humorously funky, live-in-London turn on “Better Not Look Down”—he plays guitar so sparingly, and every note is right in the pocket—but Joe Cocker comes close, riding on a classic bumpy Crusaders groove on “This Old World’s Too Funky for Me.”

Funny, we can’t remember so many singers turning up on the Crusaders’ albums, but look a little closer at the liner. For this 1987 compilation—designed, perhaps, to fill the gap between albums by a group that no longer was a full-time act—MCA reached for records by B.B. King, Tina Turner, Joe Sample, and Wilton Felder that various Crusaders played on, as well as the band’s output from Street Life through The Good and Bad Times. B.B. takes the prize for his fabulous, humorously funky, live-in-London turn on “Better Not Look Down”—he plays guitar so sparingly, and every note is right in the pocket—but Joe Cocker comes close, riding on a classic bumpy Crusaders groove on “This Old World’s Too Funky for Me.”

American blues musician, singer and songwriter, born September 16, 1925 near Itta Bena, Mississippi, United States. He died in his sleep at May 14, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States at 9:40 PM Pacific Time. B.B. is an abbrevation for 'Blues Boy'…

A three-decade walk through the King-dom of this blues giant: 36 hits, album cuts and live tracks! Concert versions of Sweet Little Angel; Let the Good Times Roll; Sweet Sixteen , and Please Love Me join The Thrill Is Gone; Don't Answer the Door; Paying the Cost to Be the Boss; Why I Sing the Blues; Chains and Things; Hummingbird; So Excited; Ghetto Woman; Help the Poor; Never Make a Move Too Soon , and more.

Universal's double-disc Icon doubles the size of their single-disc set of the same name and covers the same ground only in greater detail, adding a few more live tracks and studio staples to draw a greater picture of his ABC and MCA recordings of the late ‘60s, ‘70s, and beyond. It’s a bit shorter than 2006’s Gold and not quite as rounded, yet it’s still a very good sampler of B.B. King at his latter-day best.

Lucille & Friends is a compilation album by B.B. King released in 1995. On it, he is accompanied by major jazz, rock, and blues artists who collaborated on these songs over the past 25 years.