Ranking: The 10 best songs from BB King
BB King was much more than just a Gibson guitar and a few killer licks. For decades he was one of the biggest stars on the black radio. Dozens of songs that became classics. Between 1951 and 1992 he published 75 R&B Hitsingles. King wore the flag of the Memphis Blue throughout his career. But he also paid attention to the pop music that developed around him.
Its best plates expanded the possibilities of the blues and recorded the sounds of R&B, soul and radio. King’s voice and the cutting solos that he played on the guitar, which he called “Lucille”, were constant. But everything around them changed. These 10 songs, all of which were hits in their time, give an impression of the range of his art. See Kings too Five biggest live appearances and our definitive profile of 1998, On the bus with BB Kingan.
Ranking: The 10 best songs from BB King
“Three O’Clock Blues” (1951)
It wasn’t BB King’s first single – rather his ninth. But this cover version of Lowell Fulson’s “Three O’Clock Blues”, which King published in 1951, became his first and greatest hit. He led the R&B charts for five weeks. As badly recorded as it is (King’s vocals and guitar are much louder than anything else), “Three O’Clock Blues” laid the foundation for his career. With the rich, global sound of his voice, which, after almost every phrase, is answered by a cruel pointed commentary from his guitar. And an arrangement that is somewhat more sophisticated than the Hinterwäldler-shack-Country blues that suggests it. There is even a brass section.
Ranking: The 10 best songs from BB King
“You upset me baby” (1954)
Kings fourth R&B hit number one comes into driving with a six grades long horn fanfare. Which then exposes to make room for a distinctive, loop -shaped guitar.
The following live versions would make this King original a brisk workout. But the leisurely swing of the studio version fits King’s awesome commitment to good -natured lust that comes with a casual charm. And his casual boast with the dimensions of the object of his desire-91.5-71-112-testifies to the timeless pop appeal.
Ranking: The 10 best songs from BB King
“Every Day I have the blues” (1955)
Could sold more copies in the version of the rival, which was recorded by Joe Williams and the Count Basie Orchestra in the same year. But because he opened his live shows well into the 1970s with “Every Day I have the blues”, King became a blues musician with which the fashionable blues standard is still most identified today.
His success with the song, which was written by the Sparks brothers in the 1930s and received its modern form (although not his title) with “Nobody Loves Me” by Memphis Slim in 1949, he attributed the “crisp and relaxed” wind arrangements of the arranger Maxwell Davis.
Ranking: The 10 best songs from BB King
“Sweet Sixteen” (1960)
After he started preferring gentle pop ballads to expand his audience at the end of the 1950s, King’s career as a R&B hit maker stalled. In 1959 none of his singles made it into the charts.
But with “Sweet Sixteen”, a big-Joe gymnast number, which King freed from her powerful blower, he returned to what he could best. King accompanies every complaining voice here with a tight guitar comment. Verse of Verse slowly builds up to a violent bubbling. This is all the more powerful because it never goes into a Katharsis.
“Don’t Answer the Door” (1966)
In the mid -1960s, King had found his mature guitar style, which is characterized by sharp, precise phrases that are subtly backed up with the vibrato of the left hand, as you can hear in this particularly atmospheric hit.
While an organ is pondering in the background and moves from one chord to the next like tectonic plates, King is urging that his wife should remain locked up in her house all day. Far from her family. He never reveals where the possessive anger comes from in his texts.
“Why I Sing the Blues” (1969)
The highlight of BB Kings album Live & Well From 1969 – recorded with a studio band, which also included Al Cooper at the piano – is a reserved but angry list of humiliation in the history of African Americans. From Middle Passage to urban poverty. With an additional stanza in which King (at the beginning of forty) complains how old he gets.
It also has a more modern groove than many of his then singles. His old label, Kent Records, which he left in 1962, landed hits until 1971 with his stock.
“The Thrill is Gone” (1970)
BB King’s largest pop hit drastically revised Roy Hawkins from 1951. And converted the lawsuit of an unjustly treated man from heartbreaking anger into icy vengeance. Produced by Bill Szymczyk, who would soon be working with the Eagles on their biggest seventies plates, the groove is supple and controlled. The strings are reserved enough to add drama and tension as well as a melodic counterpoint in the lower area.
Kings guitar work is most versatile. It plucks the notes with icy, repellent precision and then lyrically expands them into subtle variations of the vocal melody.
“Chains and Things” (1970)
After the success of “The Thrill Is Gone”, BB King began to experiment more often with arrangements inspired by pop and rock. The most successful of the six singles, which in the 1970s of the crossover hit Indianola Mississipi Seeds Published is a slow, reputable song, whose unmistakable, blue phrase was made from an error.
King later said: “I hit the wrong tone and worked out there. We asked the arranger to have the strings follow the sound.” The haunting e-piano reef that accompanies the song is played by none other than Carole King.
“To know you is to love you” (1973)
Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright were co-authors of the slowly building, eight and a half-minute title track from King’s album from 1973, in which he was supported by studio musicians from Philadelphia. Including the drummer Earl Young and the guitarist Norman Harris. They were in the process of shaping the disco sound.
The resulting bubbling radio was far from the straight blues that BB King (mostly) still played on stage. But he expanded his art much further in the direction that “The Thrill Is Gone” had opened. And even brought him into the show Soul train.
“Never Make a Move Too Soon” (1978)
The jazz fusion band The Crusaders accompanied BB King on his album Midnight Believer From 1978. Based on an instrumental piece that the Crusaders had recorded as “Greasy Spoon” years earlier, “Never Make A Move too” was modernized. And with a refined, precise text about relationship strategies and a souped-up party arrangement that is reminiscent of Marvin Gayes “Got to Give IT Up”.
It became a top 20-R & B hit. And to a kind of standard that was covered by everyone, from Bonnie Raitt to Toni Tennille. King later took it up as a duet with Roger Daltrey.