Happy belated birthday to The Boss. B.B. King, youre THE MAN An inspiration to anyone whos ever played a twelve bar blues, and a true gentleman offstage. God hasnt made too many better or kinder human beings. This is still my favorite B.B. King album. If youve never heard it. I beg you, take a few minutes and listen to some of it. Music writers still rank this as the greatest live blues album in history. Its raw, funky, and the band cooks from the first note. The call and response between B.B.s guitar and the women in the crowd shows how close Gospel and Blues really are, listen to Its My Own Fault, and youll hear the Blues on an entirely different level. I am going to play it uninterrupted on the show this Friday. Its that good. Live At The Regal suffers from a really bad editing job and very often the mix is just bizarre, but theres an energy coming thru the grooves thats magical. Rewind: By the time this album came out in 65, B.Bs career was in slow free fall. The Black community in Chicago was one of the few places he could still sell out a theater, In other towns like D.C. and New York, Blues was considered to be an embarrassment and reminiscent of hard times and Jim Crow. Blues singers, with a few exceptions were now opening for groups like the Temptations, and playing the rough and tumble Chittlincircuit in the deep South. Redneck cops, crooked promoters and hard times were a daily reality and live albums were often last ditch attempts by record companies to squeeze a few last bucks out of careers that were fading. THis one actually rekindled his career. ...The Regal was recorded in mono, and still sounds best that way. This is one of the few times youll hear BB open up and really play some serious guitar outside of his usual patterns, and the band, complete with a big horn section, has their game on . Its actually two shows, and the second part lags a tiny bit, but the first seventeen minutes are blistering. Within two years it would all change, the Brits like Eric Clapton , Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck and Keith Richards would cite King as being a huge influence on them. Bill Graham would hunt him down and put him in front of acts like Janis Joplin and Hendrix at the two Fillmores, and by 1970 he was becoming a superstar and an American icon, the one Blues singer that everyone has heard of. I bought my first copy of this at Waxie Maxies in Congressional Plaza around 1968. Its still the classic example of the music I fell in love with back then, Enjoy https://youtube/watch?v=WnT5YAdpWJA
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 18:08:15 +0000
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