Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 55

Record label: Chess

Produced: Johnny Pate

Recorded: The Regal Theatre, Chicago, Illinois; November 21, 1964

Released: July 1965

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: BB King (g, v); other musicians uncredited

Track listing: Every Day (I Have The Blues); Sweet Little Angel; It’s My Own Fault; How Blue Can You Get; Please Love Me; You Upset Me Baby; Worry, Worry; Woke Up This Mornin’; You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now; Help The Poor

Running time: 34.54

Current CD: MCA MCD11646

Further listening: Another live album, Blues Is King (1967), recorded in a Chicago nightclub; King Of The Blues (1992) is a valuable 4-CD compilation.

Further reading: The Arrival Of BB King (Charles Sawyer, 1980); Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of BB King (1996); www.bbking.com

Download: HMV Digital; iTunes

‘The world’s greatest blues singer, the King Of The Blues – BB King’, is how he is introduced on this seminal live album. If anyone doubted that King deserved such an introduction before hearing this performance, no one could doubt it afterwards.

The Regal Theatre was one of the major stops on the chittlin’ circuit and King often played several residencies there in a year. ‘I don’t think I played any better than I’ve played before, but the feedback from the audience was good,’ he has said of this performance. He’s not kidding: the crowd shriek, scream and holler throughout as King plays with a white-hot intensity, his own voice as impassioned as his guitar Lucille’s on songs such as Every Day (I Have The Blues), Sweet Little Angel and You Upset Me Baby, some of which he’d been playing for a decade or more and was to continue to play into the 21st century. On the witty How Blue Can You Get, King declaims: ‘I gave you seven children/And now you want to give them back,’ punching out the lyrics with an anger that still shocks.

‘Because I play it every night like for the first time. I never go note for note on the melody – I play what I’m feeling now, not what I felt yesterday.’

King’s guitar playing throughout is articulate and thrillingly emotive, with never a hint of grandstanding or cliché. ‘You don’t play a note simply because you can find one,’ explains King. ‘You do it because it makes sense. To me, every note is important.’ Apart from the irresistible power of the music, the album is also notable for signalling the end of blues music as an exclusively black form. It’s a fair bet that there wasn’t a single white person in the Regal audience. Soon, however, King would be playing gigs at which a black face would be a rarity.