His Best: Electric B.B. King [Original recording remastered]

B.B. King | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 21, 1998)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Mca
• ASIN: B0000062Y3
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #325,210 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Tired Of Your Jive

2. Don't Answer The Door

3. The B.B. Jones

4. All Over Again

5. Paying The Cost To Be The Boss

6. Think It Over

7. I Done Got Wise

8. Meet My Happiness

9. Sweet Sixteen

10. You Put It On Me

11. I Don't Want You Cuttin' Off Your Hair

12. Waitin' On You (Studio Version)

13. Messy But Good

14. Night Life (Studio Version)

Editorial Reviews

Although this collection has "Don't Answer the Door," "Paying the Cost to Be the Boss" and a nice live re-cut of "Sweet Sixteen" to highly recommend it, this 1968 issue is hardly King's best, and the "electric" part of the title makes it sound like there's an acoustic B.B. King album lurking around somewhere that you and I somehow missed in the last 40 years. To be sure, these are rock solid performances all recorded between 1965 to 1968, just as King's music was getting slicker and more urban. But this was one of the albums that helped introduce B.B. to a more modern audience (it's gone on to sell over a million copies in 30 years' time), heading straight to the timeline of "The Thrill Is Gone" putting him on the map worldwide. This 1998 CD reissue also includes three bonus tracks, studio versions of "Waitin' On You" and "Night Life," plus "Messy But Good" from the motion picture soundtrack For the Love of Ivy. Not his best, certainly electric, and ultimately, a good one to add to the collection after you've gotten about five or six others first. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good B.B., September 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: His Best: Electric B.B. King (Audio CD)

I hate to give a B.B. King CD any less than five stars, but not every song on this CD is great. I did not like track number 3, The B.B. Jones, at all. It's some cheesy dance tune, from a movie soundtrack. It seems like a song that B.B. was required to perform. His heart is not in it at all. Having said that, the rest of the CD is really good. Several King classics are here like Don't Answer The Door, Paying The Cost To Be The Boss and Sweet Sixteen. There's even a nice instrumental which showcases B.B.'s guitar nicely. Overall, I think there are much better B.B. King collections out there than this one, but it still has some really good stuff (Don't Answer The Door is awesome!) Get Live At The Regal or Live In Cook County Jail before this.

5.0 out of 5 stars CLassic, October 15, 2009

By 

Bill Your 'Free Form FM Handi Cyber Print DJ ... (Mahwah, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: His Best: Electric B.B. King (Audio CD)

Written off in 1965, blues was given new breath thanks to its rock and roll followers-Cream, Rolling Stones-from over under the union jack, and by 1968, the music had a real boom on. Even the bluesman agree the British Invasaion helped them get their infanately deserved credit.

For eletric times, electric blues is perfect, and you can't get much more perfect than this set by BB King.

By this time, bluesmen had acess to much better backing bands and recording equipment, which was imrpoving every few months. But King's seacret weapon here is Quincy Jones.

Quincy was a jazz dude, but knew how to catch the essence of the blues better than anybody. To this he added a polish and the best musicans around.

This shows in spades on this album. This is basicaly 12-bar material, but with the horns and funky rhythms, has an elegance 1950s Chicago blues was not aiming for. Just the rhythm section alone gives this music that late-60s funk feel that many have seem to forgotten about.

If you want to start with the blues, you can't go wrong with this classic.