Customer Reviews

King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents B. B. King Live!

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This album, alternatively listed as "Greatest Hits Live," "King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents B.B. King" and "King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents B. B. King recorded live over 2 Nights in NYC June 1978," the latter of which is some sort of import, which people like to charge a lot of money for. Do yourself a favor and buy one of the first two copies, both of which are on King Biscuit Flower Hour label, and you'll spend less money.

This album, which features 6 cuts from B.B. King on the King Biscuit Flower Hour in NYC, recorded over two nights in June of 1978, shows King in fine form. Some reviews may lead you to believe that this is nothing special; granted, he does run through casual material, and plays the classics How Blue Can You Get and The Thrill is Gone. The versions of these songs are not particularly as inspired as some other live B.B. King recordings available, but if you want to hear some live tracks from the master of the Blues, this is a bargain starting point.

There are guest appearances by Johnny and Edgar Winter on Goin' Down Slow, which features guitar solos with Johnny (as well as Johnny's vocals) and some funky organ playing by Edgar, it's a fun slow blues-jam that you don't normally get to hear King playing in. George Benson sits in on the next two tracks: I Got Some Help I Don't Need and Just a Little Love. Benson returns to his roots of R&B and blues playing that he did with Brother Jack McDuff in the early 1960s, and tears it up and brings out the best in B.B. The 26 minutes with George Benson is the real treat of this album, and makes it worth getting just to hear the two tracks he is on.

This is a pretty good live album with a pretty tight back up band (not as tight as his 1960s bands), which is made a little sweeter with the guests Johnny & Edgar Winter and George Benson. It is worth getting just to hear George Benson in his blues element.

We already know how awesome BB KING is as a Blues player. He's the man, plain and simple. But it was especially interesting to hear when BB KING called George Benson up on the stage to play along with him. Benson then clearly demonstrated that he can play "BLUES" as well and not only the "Jazz" he usually plays.
BB KING even commented on how he feels that GEORGE BENSON is one of the greatest guitarists alive. If BB KING is giving this much well-deserved credit to George Benson, then it really says a lot.

Again, I want to point out that Benson demonstrates that he Blues and not ONLY Jazz (which is what I love about him)
You all need to hear this!
5 Stars and TWO THUMBS UP!

for anyone who has watched an older and more tired b.b. king perform the last couple years the younger generation might wonder what all the fuss was about. well this album from 1978 will give anyone a textbook lesson on b.b. king. his guitar tone is biting and nasty and this is a time when he really cared about playing the guitar. he makes his guitar sing, his makes multiple bends on one note and even shows some fast licks which is not normally a b.b. trademark.also on the album is johnny winter who does a marvelously restrained lead on the song going down slow. if you only own one b.b. king album this should be the one.

This CD represents what was broadcast on the King Biscuit Flower Hour. As such, it is brief, and some of the cuts are heavily edited. We now have the luxury of hearing both shows (and both early and late sets) in their entirety, recorded at The Bottom Line in NYC in June 1978, on the Wolfgang's Vault website ([...]). With this new information, we now know how good the performances actually are, and that How Blue Can You Get? was SEVERELY edited to fit the radio show - in fact the version on the CD has been edited down to lesst than half the actual performance time. The result is what seems to be a perfunctory performance of the song when in fact B.B. and the band jammed for over ten minutes.

The real meat of the CD is guest appearances by Johnny & Edgar Winter, and George Benson. Goin' Down Slow is more Winter Bros. than B.B., and if you heard it without knowing the source, or hearing B.B.'s intro, you wouldn't know it was a B.B. King cut. B takes a back seat throughout the song. The appearance of Benson on the second night is more collaborative. George and B trade licks back and forth on two great blues jams. Benson shows that he is capable of a blues riff now and then. It's a great moment and surely reason enough to own this.

Yes, you have to hear yet another version of The Thrill Is Gone, just keep in mind that this was orginally produced for broadcast to a general radio-listening audience. And it's not a bad version either. I don't know how B can perform this every night and not get sick of it, but he never does because of his desire to deliver what his audience expects from him. And he does deliver.

So with the little caveat that this is a radio broadcast pressed to CD, I can recommend this to King fans, and if your a Benson or Winter Brothers fan, you need to listen too.

This is a release of a show recorded in 1978 in New York; a bit of magic captured when George Benson and Johnny & Edgar Winter join B.B. for a blues clinic.

A couple of killer extended blues jams with George & B.B. trading licks straight from blues heaven.

Definitely a keeper.

just pulled this one off my shelf after a long time having not listened to it. remembered just how priceless this recording is. anybody that looks at the track listing and thinks "oh dear poo, another B.B. CD with 'thrill is gone', 'how blue can you get', and 'caledonia'", subsequently passing on this one is making a huge mistake. that's what those skip buttons are for (unless, of course, these haven't been played out for you). the tracks with the Winters and the 25 minutes of George Benson in the middle of these are indeed the meat and potatoes. I didn't expect much from Benson, but he is fantastic and brings out the best in Mr. King. their extended jams in "Just A Little Love" are worth the price of this CD alone. fans of B.B.'s guitar-playing will dig this a lot more than those just into his vocals.

THE TALENT AND THE JUICE THAT COMES OUT ON EVERY TRACK IS BY FAR TRUE BLUES. GEORGE BENSON -EDGAR & JOHN WINTERS. MY BODY & SOUL FELT THE POWER OF THESE MASTERS AT PLAY.SO MUCH THAT I THINK I GROOVED AS DEEP AS THEY DUG TO REALLY PULL THE JUICE OUT OF IT. IF YOU HAVEN'T HEARD THIS CD THAN YOU ARE- DEFINATELY MISSING OUT ON A BLUES JOURNEY WORTH TAKING!!!!!

The irony of this record is that B. B. King working in Indianola in the Mid-Mississippi delta did not hear King Biscuit Time which Sonny Boy Williamson II started on KFFA radio in Helena Arkansas in 1941 by Sonny Boy and Robert Lockwood Jr., Robert Johnson's stepson is still running at 12:15 PM every weekday on KFFA since 1941. Sonny Boy left in 1944, Robert Jr. left to do another KFFA show in 1942 (for which he was paid). B. B. King did not hear the show until 1948 when KFFA formed the Delta Broadcasting Network with WROX in Clarksdale MS. Both had 70-mile radius broadcasting coverage and it toowk WROX, 70 miles closer to reach Indianola and Itta Bena where B. B. King was living. B. B. might have heard the King Biscuit Boys in Itta Bena in the interim.
The Sonny Boy and Robert Jr. connection was in 1949 when Sonny Boy was hostinn a show on KWEM, a radio station in West Memphis Arkansa, auditioned for him and played on the show -- his first radio exposure -- and got recommended for a West Memphis gig by Sonny Boy who had two scheduled -- B. B.'s first paid gig. This may have only been the only time he met Sonny Boy face-t-face. He soon had a new bandleader: Robert Jr. When B. B. decided to go on his own as a trio, Robert Jr., a strong rhythm guitaris disagreed, "You can't play and sing, you have bad timing and you'll starve."
Then Robert Jr. pulled over B. B.'s manager and band leader. "Get him a strong bass, a strong rhythm guitarist and drummer and let him sing in his gospel voice (B B. is not a blues singer but a gospel singer) have conversations with his guitar and he might make it." Twenty years later B. B. found out about Robert Jr.'s award-winning advice.
Sonny Boy Williamson II died in 1965 at the age of 53 (not the 70ish image he had), Robert Jr. died a couple of years ago at 92 after touring the world and keeping a downtown Cleveland weekly gig and recording several Grammy-nominated albums in recent years (I was at the funeral and wake), B. B. is still trucking on... God Bless Him (King Biscuit Flower Hour has nothing to do with King Biscuit Time except they sued to stop the King Biscuit Blues Festival from using the name.)