Review: B. B. King - Singin' The Blues (1957)
Tracks: 1) Please Love Me; 2) You Upset Me Baby; 3) Everyday I Have The Blues; 4) Bad Luck; 5) 3 O’Clock Blues; 6) Blind Love; 7) Woke Up This Morning; 8) You Know I Love You; 9) Sweet Little Angel; 10) Ten Long Years; 11) Did You Ever Love A Woman; 12) Crying Won’t Help You.
REVIEW
B. B. King’s singles on RPM records started flowing as early as 1949, but since most of his long and prolific career was LP-oriented, it makes sense to choose as our point of departure this 1956 collection, which puts together the majority of his best singles from 1951 to 1955 (a more comprehensive overview of the early years can probably be found on some later anthologies, but, as far as I am able to tell, there is no single collection that puts together all of his early material).
Many of these songs were huge hits on the blues and R&B charts — but, for some curious reason, missed attracting white audiences, who were usually far more enthralled with the likes of Muddy Waters and Elmore James in the 1950s. If you look up any random biographies of blues/R&B-enthralled British Invaders, for instance, you will rarely see B. B. mentioned as a serious influence — except by just a few oddjobs such as Eric Clapton, and even then, usually in retrospect rather than in any interviews from the 1960s. The reason? My best guess — too clean.
The thing is that already from the very early days, B. B. King positioned himself as, or, rather, was marketed as a sort of king of «Blues-de-Luxe»: clean, dazzling, respectable playing for respectable gentlemen. Just take a look at the album cover: with that big fat Gibson, that neat pin-striped suit and that handsome bowtie, he looks much more like the black equivalent of Bill Haley than Muddy Waters’ lost brother. The exact same association applies to the music: smooth, mid-tempo, backed by professional jazz musicians with their big brass arrangements. And, to make matters «worse», the guy puts as much emphasis on his singing as he does on his playing — the album isn’t called Singin’, not Playin’ The Blues for no reason — really, the most tasteless thing in blues music since the day Lonnie Johnson sold out to all them ballad-lovin’ posh people! Then again: what do you really expect from a guy one of whose primary idols in life has been Frank Sinatra? Can you even imagine Muddy or Elmore naming Frank as a major influence?
All of this is enough to explain precisely why B. B. King did not become a household name among white audiences until the late Sixties — or maybe even the early Seventies. It also explains why these early singles are not really the «milestones» they are sometimes pronounced to be. Thus, for traditional blues lovers, ‘Every Day I Have The Blues’ is one of the cornerstones of the genre, but definitely not because of this original version, a measly 2:49 in length and only featuring a simple, brief solo, thoroughly not outstanding in the context of all the other great blues heroes of the time — it took King quite a long time, at least ten years or so, to properly popularize it, along with a dozen other big hits, in the live context.
Indeed, Singin’ The Blues is no more of a milestone in the evolution of electric blues than contemporary records by the other King (Albert) — or, for that matter, even earlier records by T-Bone Walker. Most of the time, B. B. King plays relatively standard, predictable licks which do not differ all that much from the regular techniques of the epoch; more importantly, the compact form of the 45"-tailored ditty does not allow him the slightest opportunity to stretch out, improvise, or develop a theme.
So in the end, if there is one reason to listen to these singles at all, it is truly and verily the singing. Unquestionably, at this point B. B. King was the most vocally-endowed blues performer in the business (and would remain so until the emergence of a strong competitor in Freddie King), and his manner of phrasing and vocalizing owes much more to urban semi-crooners like Leroy Carr and Lonnie Johnson, not to mention white lounge performers (to whom the man must have lent quite a serious ear), than to hoarse growlers from the Delta. This makes it hard to associate his music with the devil, who, as I have heard, is gravely allergic to falsetto, and prefers to make serious deals with the likes of John Lee Hooker. But, when dealing with B. B. King, it is wise to remember that blues had been alternately serving as a genre of lounge entertainment since the day it was born, and to try and approach him from the same perspective one would approach Sinatra or Neil Diamond: prima facie a respectable entertainer who will try to stir up — gracefully and cautiously to some, blandly and boringly to others — the human parts of your soul rather than the animal parts.
In fact, I think I «got» this record — and B. B.’s studio style in general — when I thought of it as sort of a Clyde McPhatter album with the doo-wop harmonies and strings replaced by soaring electric guitar. Many people, I think, would share this dream: to hear Clyde McPhatter with an atmosphere of true bluesy grit instead of sentimental sap. If so, you need not look further than the original versions of ‘Three O’Clock Blues’ or ‘Did You Ever Love A Woman’ to get what you want, except you gotta be prepared that most of the hooks will be your average generic 12-bar blues. Not that this is the most tasteful combination in the world, and, honestly, even after getting it I still much prefer the period when B. B. properly reallocated the majority of his talent to his guitar playing. But there is something to be said about the art of «blues crooning» as well, though not much, and now that I’ve said it, we might as well bring the review to a close.