![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/bbking_band_cd.jpg\")
B.B. King was a towering figure in the blues. An artist whose appeal crossed over to a much wider audience, the man born Riley B. King made an indelible mark on the uniquely American musical form. His career lasted more than a half century, ending with his death at age 89 in 2015. But his crack band chose to keep the blues flame alive by continuing after King’s passing.<\/p>\n
King’s distinctive playing style \u2013 alternating between soulful vocals and searing, single-note guitar runs, but never both at once \u2013 helped make him one of the most popular (and oft-imitated) musicians in the blues idiom. He scored his first #1 hit single on the R&B charts in 1951 with \u201c3 O’Clock Blues,\u201d but it was in the early ’60s that King hit his commercial stride. A long string of hit singles began with 1961’s \u201cSomeday\u201d and continued well into the 1990s with \u201cThe Blues Come Over Me.\u201d King scored a late-career hit with his 2000 collaboration with Eric Clapton, the title track from the duo’s album Riding with the King<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The man was prolific; between his 1956 debut album Singin’ the Blues<\/i> and his final long-player (2008’s superb One Kind Favor<\/i>), King released nearly four dozen albums. He won 15 Grammy Awards, and was nominated an additional six times. He was one of the first artists inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, the hall’s second year. Even when beset by health problems, King remained musically active right up until his passing.<\/p>\n
Today, King’s ten-person band maintains a solid schedule of live performances; depending on the date, today the B.B. King Blues Band is fronted by vocalist-guitarist Michael Lee (Star of TV’s The Voice<\/em>), Claudette King or (on occasion) both. King, daughter of B.B. performs on about half of the band’s dates. For a run of a year and a half \u2013 ending earlier this year, Tito Jackson of pop royalty the Jackson 5 \u2013 was a featured vocalist as well.<\/p>\n But even the core band features powerhouse blues players. Band leader and trumpeter James \u201cBoogaloo\u201d Bolden earned his nickname from B.B. himself. Bolden \u2013 a member of King’s band for more than three decades \u2013 moves energetically about the stage while he plays; King took notice early on and bestowed the playful sobriquet upon him.<\/p>\n Lead saxophonist Eric Demmer was a member of Clarence \u201cGatemouth\u201d Brown’s band for 12 years before joining King’s outfit. Memphis-born bassist Russell Jackson got his professional start in Chicago blues man Otis Clay’s band; he went on to play with B.B. King for the last six and a half years of the legend’s life. Sax man Walter King is B.B.’s nephew and a band member since 1980.<\/p>\n A new album, The Soul of the King<\/i>, provides a studio document of the band’s skill and intensity. The album digs deep into King’s catalog with songs like \u201cPaying the Cost to Be the Boss,\u201d a B.B. Originally written in 1968, but rarely performed onstage. A 1997 recording of the song featured King backed by acolytes the Rolling Stones.<\/p>\n An all-star cast of guests lends extra firepower to The Soul of the King. That list includes guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Kenny Neal, Diunna Greenleaf and many others. R&B vocalist Mary Griffin turns in an especially noteworthy vocal performance on \u201cPaying the Cost to Be the Boss,\u201d where she’s joined by Taj Mahal on guitar.<\/p>\n Original songs \u2013 primarily from the pens of Demmer and Russell Jackson \u2013 fit in seamlessly alongside King classics like \u201cSweet Little Angel,\u201d a song that first appeared on a B.B. King single in 1956. Blues guitarist and historian Joe Louis Walker wrote, sang and played lea guitar on \u201cRegal Blues (A Tribute to the King),\u201d a centerpiece of the band’s new album.<\/p>\n But a studio record can only go so far to convey the searing emotional content \u2013 fun, humor, pathos, pain and ecstasy \u2013 of a blues show. So it’s onstage that the B.B, King Blues Band is best experienced. Four years after the loss of its leading light, the band continues in a manner that’s at once faithful to King’s legacy and wholly entertaining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" B.B. King was a towering figure in the blues. An artist whose appeal crossed over to a much wider audience, the man born Riley B. King made an indelible mark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17033,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,49,65],"tags":[273],"class_list":["post-17031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-new-release","category-review","tag-bb-king","cat-9-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17034,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17031\/revisions\/17034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/bbking_band.jpg\")
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