The Best of B.B. King, Vol. 1, also on Flair, has 20 tracks from the same era covered by this collection, which only has 12. So you should probably stick with the other...
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The Biharis harbored dreams of crossing the rich-voiced King over into the pop market during the '50s, trying him out on some rather limp ballads. Many of those outings turn...
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This is B.B.'s celebrity duet album, and a straightahead blues album this is not. But longtime fans who are aware of King's genre-stretching capabilities will find much to...
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There's more than one B.B. King best-of out on the racks, but this 1998 issue updates his latest chart achievements and puts it together in a modern, 16-track package for...
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King made his debut as producer with this album released in October, 1998. He employs the most basic of ideas for this project: record an album of B.B. King tunes, with B.B....
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In 2003, P-Vine released Sings Spirituals/Sings Freedom Songs, which contained two albums -- B.B. King's Sings Spirituals (1960) and Little Richard's Sings Freedom Songs...
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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...
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True, this 1973 vintage best-of album covers a ridiculously slim wedge of time in the blues king's long career. Yet this period was quite significant, for it marks the crest...
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Intercontinental's The Best of B.B. King is a budget-priced collection of re-recordings of such hits as "How Blue You Can Get," "Paying the Cost to Be the Boss," "Sweet...
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The double-disc collection How Blue Can You Get: Classic Live 1964-94 covers 30 years of B.B. King's remarkably popular and groundbreaking career, picking out choice live...
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The Best of B.B. King is a budget-priced, ten-track selection of early recordings, and while there are some essential items missing, it still functions as a good, affordable...
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Like any record company worth their salt, MCA knows a good gimmick when they see it, and when the millennium came around...well, the 20th Century Masters -- The Millennium...
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B.B. King
Makin' Love Good For You
Ratin: 70
By michael lipton
While B.B. King's name has become synonymous with the blues--1976's Live At The Regal remains one of the...
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Over the years, the music world has seen its share of over-70 singers who kept performing even though they didn't have much of a voice left: Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra are...
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The plodding rhythms laid down by a coterie of British rock stars for this set make one long for King's road-tested regular band. But it was the fashion in 1971 to dispatch...
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A 20-track hits compilation that should have been a great deal better than it is. The disc embarrassingly uses an inferior remake of King's classic "Whole Lotta Love"...
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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,...
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Most of B.B. King's studio albums of the 1980s and '90s tend to de-emphasize his guitar playing and consist largely of forgettable originals and obvious attempts at pop...
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This CD combines Electric B.B. King from 1977 with Blues 'n' Jazz from 1983. This material doesn't measure up to his '50s and '60s sides, but is still solid blues without...
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Here's much of the material that helped B.B. King make his move into the hearts and minds of mainstream America. Whether you think that was ultimately good or bad, it's...
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20 killer tracks from B.B. King's 1950s heyday, including quite a few alternate takes and a few tough-to-locate items ("Bye Bye Baby," "Dark Is the Night," "Jump with You...
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MCA Special Products' Got My Mojo Working is a ten-track sampler of B.B. King's earliest recordings. Although this is by no means definitive, it is effective, since it...
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Very solid 23-track package culled from some of King's best mid-to-late-'60s ABC-Paramount and BluesWay LPs. Some of the best cuts stem from a sizzling live album;...
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B.B. King hasn't made many better pop-flavored albums than this. Besides making Leon Russell's "Hummingbird" sound like his own composition, King showed that you can put the...
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No way can a mere four discs cover every facet of the blues king's amazing recording career, but MCA makes a valiant stab at it. The first two discs, as expected, are...
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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...
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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...
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A decent but short (nine songs) late '60s set, with somewhat sparser production than he'd employ with the beefier arrangements of the "Thrill Is Gone" era. Brass and...
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B.B. King's extremely ill-advised foray into mushy Nashville cornpone. Hearing him croon the title track in front of an array of Music Row's most generic pickers is enough...
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Another collaboration that worked a lot better than one might have expected. King and the Crusaders blended in a marginally funky, contemporary style for the buoyant "Never...
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Another 21-track anthology chock full of alternate takes and previously unreleased masters from B.B. King's 1950s stint at RPM/Kent. A wild cross-section of material --...
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Two great original Crown albums from the '50s appear on one import CD, including most of King's Top Ten R&B hits from the period: "3 O'Clock Blues," "Please Love Me," "You...
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For a recording fervently hyped as a special occasion -- B.B. King's 50th album and all that -- this one is surprisingly patchy in concept and erratic in execution. Five of...
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From the contemporary-looking cover, this would appear to be recently recorded material. But wait -- these are all 1950s/early-'60s instrumentals from the Modern/Kent...
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During his decade recording for MCA, B.B. King was generally teamed with overblown accompaniment rather than his regular (and perfectly complementary) traveling band. This...
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The combination of King and the well-oiled Philly rhythm section that powered hits by the O'Jays, Spinners, and Stylistics proved a surprisingly adroit one. Two huge hits...
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MCA Special Products' Why I Sing the Blues collects ten highlights from his late-'60s and early-'70s recordings for ABC, which were later acquired by MCA. Considering that...
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On this release, King comes close to equaling his past triumphs on small independent labels in the '50s and '60s. He's ditched the psuedo-hip production fodder and cut a...
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MCA's double-disc set Anthology is a bit of a blessing, actually, a welcome entry to B.B. King's extensive catalog, since the last half of his career has not been...
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It took 28 years, but in 1999, Live in Japan finally became available in the U.S. Recorded at Sankei Hall in Tokyo on March 4 and 7, 1971, Live in Japan was originally...
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This is a first-rate summary of the cream of the first few years of B.B. King's career, the 26 songs all taken from 1951-57 singles on the RPM label. Though relatively few...
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Even if B.B. King is the King of the Blues, some might find it strange that he chose to record Let the Good Times Roll, a tribute album to Louis Jordan, the King of Jump...
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B.B. King is not only a timeless singer and guitarist, he's also a natural-born entertainer, and on Live at the Regal the listener is treated to an exhibition of all three...
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The potential for a collaboration between B.B. King and Eric Clapton is enormous, of course, and the real questions concern how it is organized and executed. This first...
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It took B.B. King a long time to get around to his first Christmas album, which didn't appear until about half a century into his recording career. It's an adequate,...
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B.B. King must have surprised everyone at his record company when he decided to record this album of covers by some of his favorite artists, including Kraftwerk and Britney...
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B.B. King was 77 years old when Reflections was released, which perhaps entitled him to reflect back on the song standards the album contained. Despite advancing age, King...
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Issued as part of a series in conjunction with the major television documentary series The Blues, this is a hop-skip-jump 12-song compilation of tracks spanning nearly half...
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BB King's edition of Classic Masters concentrates on his RPM recordings from the first half of the '50s, adding two cuts from his stint at Kent in the early '60s. At 12...
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This edition in Universal's discount-priced compilation series 20th Century Masters/The Christmas Collection is actually a re-titled reissue of the 2001 collection A...
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There has been a plethora of B.B. King compilations since the beginning of the new millennium, most of them not worth the plastic they are made of, but there have been some...
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Ever since John Lee Hooker's The Healer, the record industry favored teaming up veteran artists with hot-shot contemporary artists, or at least pairing that veteran with...
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In theory, the idea behind Geffen's 2005 compilation The Ultimate Collection seems sound: gather together 21 iconic tracks from the entirety of B.B. King's long career and...
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This was B.B.'s breakthrough album in 1969, which finally got him the long-deserved acclaim that was no less than his due. It contained his signature number, "The Thrill Is...
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In 2005 MCA/Universal repackaged B.B. King's greatest live albums -- Live at the Regal, Blues Is King and Live in Cook County Jail -- as a three-CD box set. It's not a bad...
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