Review: B. B. King - Sings Spirituals (1959)
Tracks: 1) Precious Lord; 2) Save A Seat For Me; 3) Ole Time Religion; 4) Sweet Chariot; 5) Servant’s Prayer; 6) Jesus Gave Me Water; 7) I Never Heard A Man; 8) Army Of The Lord; 9) I Am Willing To Run All The Way; 10) I’m Working On The Building; 11*) A Lonely Lover’s Plea; 12*) I Am; 13*) The Key To My Kingdom; 14*) Story From My Heart And Soul; 15*) In The Middle Of An Island; 16*) Sixteen Tons.
REVIEW
I kind of like (and still mostly agree with) my old, short, crude, irreverent review of this album (from 2015 – seems like a lifetime ago already), so let me first reproduce it here with minimal edits, then I’ll throw in a few extra comments on the Old-and-Wise side of the story.
«Far be it from us to say that B. B. King is a poor singer — he has a nice, endearing, sometimes almost silky tone that never grates or annoys.
Further be it from us to say that B. B. King is not a spiritually sensible man — regardless of how much money he has made and how much of it he has not given away to the poor, there is little reason to doubt his sincere faith in the Lord (who has, among other things, provided him with all that money).
Still further be it from us to say that B. B. King has no right, or reason, or business recording an entire album of gospel tunes if he feels like it — especially considering that, every once in a while, everyone deserves at least a brief change from the 12-bar mold, and going into gospel is nowhere near as cringeworthy as, say, going into crooning.
And be it as furthest of the furthest from us as possible to say that B. B. King Sings Spirituals is a proverbially bad album. If you have not suffered priest abuse, be it Catholic or Protestant; if you have no 19th century-style racial prejudices; and if you can stand a little musical take on «ol’ time religion» propelled by good singing and good organ playing, the record cannot be put down on its own merits.
None of which, however, prevents me from stating the obvious: I cannot think of a reason why anyone would want to hear, much less own, a B. B. King album with no guitar on it whatsoever. B. B. King is a guitar player, period. If he does not want to play his guitar, let him not play his guitar in front of his parents, his children, his close friends, or his mirror. In this life, B. B. King has one and only one social purpose (that matters, anyway), and that is playing his guitar. I can understand that he did not want to be pigeonholed. But I can do nothing about it — I want to pigeonhole him, and I will pigeonhole him.»
Now for some moments of saving grace. From a historical perspective, Sings Spirituals has some importance. As a conceptual project, it was B. B. King’s very first album to be released as an album rather than a randomized collection of singles — all the recordings were freshly produced over one session in April 1959. It was also his first and last album that very explicitly paid tribute to the old musical tradition of spirituals on which he was born and raised — certainly not the only time that King so explicitly acknowledged his racial and social roots, but the only time he focused entirely on the matter. And finally, it was one of the first, if not the first time ever in the world of the blues, when an entertainer primarily known and revered for one certain skill (guitar playing), would defiantly and single-mindedly attempt to reinvent himself as a major practicioner of a different skill. It’s kind of in-yer-face here: "You only want me to shut up and play my guitar? Well, this time you have no choice whatsoever but to accept me as a singer!" Which makes this a completely different move from Nat King Cole, for instance — whose gradual transition from piano playing to crooning was clearly motivated by factors of fan response and popularity.
All of this provides ground for respect rather than ridicule; yet even after a few additional listens to the record I am unable to convert that formal respect to genuine emotional impression. Technically, B. B. King, particularly in his younger days, had a solid singing voice, with decent range and capable of nuanced overtones, but it didn’t really have enough depth and power for this kind of material, not even reaching the level of an Elvis, let alone a Mahalia Jackson. Nor do you ever get the feeling of all this spirituality flowing through the heart of a «troubled man» — this is more like the spirituality of a content, generally satisfied person, reverent and cautious enough so as to not forget to regularly thank the Lord for his well-being. It might, in fact, have worked better if he’d come up with this idea in his later years rather than in his youth; maybe then all the accumulated baggage of old age and «troubles I’ve seen» would have automatically added an extra layer of depth and authenticity. Here, even the more personal and intimate prayer-type spirituals such as ‘Save A Seat For Me’ and ‘I Am Willing To Run All The Way’ fail to rally me to the Lord’s rewarding side.
It is certainly telling that among the bonus tracks on the 2006 CD reissue, even if most of them naturally belong to the same category of spirituals, one finds embedded a loud, exuberant, brass-heavy, and utterly corny cover of Tony Bennett’s ‘In The Middle Of An Island’ — I am not entirely sure if this was recorded during the exact same period, yet it does not feel like it’s totally out of place on an album like this, cozily nestled in between ‘Story From My Heart And Soul’ and ‘Sixteen Tons’. With his blues-de-luxe approach to everything he ever did, B. B. King managed to cross-breed cotton fields and Las Vegas time and time again; I’m sure his Jesus always paid sufficient attention to his silk suit and black tie before giving his servant water, ’cause every bluesman crazy ’bout a sharp-dressed Lord and suchlike.
Even so, I bear no instinctive or intellectually synthesized hatred towards the record; all of these considerations merely try to explain why B. B. King, no matter how deeply he may have wanted to, is never really counted among the great gospel singers of our time. But it does add at least a formally interesting page to his story, explicitly reminding us of the influences that were quite important not just to his singing, but to his playing as well — think of it as his equivalent of David Bowie’s Pin-Ups or The Band’s Moondog Matinee, albums that very few people would list among their favorites but do a good job of reminding us that individual artistry does not simply appear out of nothing within a vacuum.