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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
Heralded as one of the greatest live blues albums ever recorded, this set catches the singer-guitarist as his star was in ascent: in 1964 playing Chicago's answer to Harlem's Apollo Theater--the Regal. King's performance is visceral. He sings so hard that gravel flies even in his clearest high notes. And his trademark single-note guitar lines are sharp and steely, matching his voice with trembling vigor. He offers early hits like "How Blue Can You Get," "Worry, Worry," and "You Upset Me Baby" to what's essentially his adopted hometown crowd (by his own account, King had already played the theater hundreds of times). They give him a hero's welcome. In fact, the audience's screaming enthusiasm is distracting. But rarely has a love-fest of this magnitude between a performer and fans been documented. --Ted Drozdowski
Product Description
Limited Edition import-only vinyl LP repressing of this album. Universal. 2007.
--This text refers to the
Vinyl
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Blues People & Riley King,
By Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Live at the Regal (Audio CD)
As has been noted, this is one of the essential albums, one of the records that everyone is supposed to have like John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, like Robert Johnson, like the music Billie Holiday made with Lester Young for Columbia, like Louis's Hot 5s and Hot 7s, like Elvis's Sun Sessions. Beyond that, this is something that has become increasingly rare, a live blues recording where the music is played for blues people, African American working class and middle class blues people in an urban center. This all about singing and swinging and jiving and talking to the audience and the audience talking back. When I was in Mississippi in the mid 1960s doing civil rights work, I met Blues People who loved BB King who didn't know that he played the guitar. The expression always was and still is 'BLUES SINGER," not blues guitarist. He sang the blues the way they needed to listen to and in a Blues People venue the folks will talk back to him too. My favorite, classic moment of the blues dialog here is in "It's my own fault baby" where Riley sings "I gave you seven children, and now you want to give 'em back." All the sistas in the audience scream. Gruffer sounds came from the men. What is essential to blues performance for BLUES PEOPLE is the constant dialog between the singer and the audience that is the heart of the native blues experience. The dialog isn't about the impeccable guitar playing on this record, or the totally righteous playing of the band, or even the fine voice of Riley B. King here, but it is about what the words the lyrics speak to the lives of the audience, and what the audience responds to the singer. That's the center of blues, not heavy guitar licks that the post-folk-post rock blues fan thinks is the essence of heavy blues. It's a shame the audience for the blues has almost disappeared, that blues stars no longer play in big "Chitlin' Circuit" theaters like the Regal, the Apollo, the Howard, the old non hippie Fillmore, or that you can't see Riley or Bobby Blue Bland in smoky little night clubs in the ghetto. Perhaps, I am showing my age here, because time has to roll on. I am sure that night at the Regal there was someone who could remember when the sistas and their men would be shouting back at things Bessie Smith, or Big Maceo and Tampa Read, Lonnie Johnson, or Memphis Minnie had sung to them from that same stage without the electric instruments. The real Black blues when it was based among us, was about singing, about commentary. For even the greatest guitarists like Riley, Lonnie Johnson, T-Bone Walker, Johnny Lee Hooker, Guitar Slim, the guitar playing and the band were just ways to emphasize how the to talk to audience. This brings to mind that great Betty Carter Album, "The Audience and Betty Carter." This is the Blues People and Riley King talking to each other. That's priceless, get it, and listen to it.
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
essential,
By A Customer
This review is from: Live at the Regal (Audio CD)
I used to teach the guitar. And whenever a student demonstrated that he had mastered the basics, I would decide whether or not I'd keep working with him in the following manner: I would play the first three or four minutes of "Live at the Regal" and watch his reaction. If he shrugged, or said something like, "That's pretty good," I would shake his hand and wish him a good life. If he fell off his chair instead (which is perhaps the only appropriate response to this extraordinary record), we'd get back to work.The "Sweet Little Angel" here is to electric blues what Ellington's "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" (from Ellington at Newport) is to big band jazz -- a moment in time that captures the essence of an entire musical form.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Classic Live Albums of All Time,
By
This review is from: Live at the Regal (Audio CD)
By and large live albums are mostly a disappointment, but occasionally there are those rare moments when an artist connects with the audience and something truly magical occurs. There are only a handful of truly essential live albums, like the Allman Brothers' AT FILLMORE EAST, the Rolling Stones' GET YER YA YA'S OUT and the Who's LIVE AT LEEDS. You can also add to the list B.B. King's LIVE AT THE REGAL.
On Nov. 21, 1964, B.B. King stepped onto the stage of the Regal Theatre in Chicago and produced one of the best blues albums of all time. What makes this all the more amazing is that by 1964, B.B. King had been doing about 300 shows a year for the previous ten years and he still had the energy of a man half his age. Judging from the two separate introduction (before track 1 and again before track 6), the songs were taken from two different sets. Of the ten songs, he went back to the early years of his career with 1953's "You Upset Me Baby" and 1955's "Every Day I Have the Blues" and continued through to the present with his then current hit "How Blue Can You Get." B.B. King is backed by a six-piece band, including Kenneth Sands (trumpet), Johnny Board and Bobby Forte (tenor sax), Duke Jethro (piano), Leo Lauchie (bass), and Sonny Freeman (drums). As stated in the original liner notes: "These are the blues, and this is the King--B.B.!" 'Nuf said. ESSENTIAL
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