54. B.B. King - Live at the Regal (1965)

1. Every Day I Have the Blues

2. Sweet Little Angel *

3. It's My Own Fault

4. How Blue Can You Get

5. Please Love Me

6. You Upset Me Baby *

7. Worry, Worry

8. Woke Up This Mornin'

9. You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now

10. Help the Poor *

A

Well this is a nice album. B.B. King was a fine singer and an astonishing blues guitarist, and the band he had backing him for this recording plays some tight, complex, but earthy music, with piano and saxophone to fill out the sound. I don't know that I have all that much to say about it, though - this is very well-executed, but it's also pretty much standard blues stuff. It's a lot more complex, lyrically, than something like Muddy Waters. I was reading, and apparently this is considered uptown blues - a slightly jazzier, more polished approach to the genre. But then you have a song like "Help the Poor", which is very Latin in style and sounds more like Santana than something you'd hear in a Chicago blues joint. 

Anyway, this is a very fine album but I can't think of much to say about it. King is an excellent musician. He not only plays beautifully, but has a wonderful range to his voice. He can play it straight and sweet, or launch into a sexy growl, or even sing a sort of strange plaintiff falsetto like he does on "Worry, Worry". Lyrically, the album's not terribly interesting, but King makes up for it with stagecraft. He does a great job of talking to the audience, getting them riled up, embarking on little sermons regarding relationship advice and so forth. The result is a marvellously entertaining album of very beautiful and engaging music. 

We've had a lot of live albums on this List so far, and all of them have been excellent. I don't typically listen to live music, so I've really enjoyed it. I can see why some people prefer it. Studio recordings are more polished and allow for more complex arrangements, but live albums are more immediate, more thrilling in that you're never quite sure what will happen next, and the presence of an audience completely changes the dynamic of the music and the demeanour of the musician. I'm looking forward to the next one.