B B King Live At The BBC CD

2008 collection that compiles the best of BB King's BBC recordings onto one CD for the very first time and includes some of his biggest hits such as 'Paying the Cost to Be the Boss' and 'The Thrill Is Gone' as well as 'When Love Comes To Town'. Featuring highlights from his three finest UK performances alongside a session recording made in the BBC's studios, this CD offer an incredible snapshot of an artist at the peak of his career performing some of his greatest material. 14 tracks. Universal.

This collection of live B.B. King recordings from the U.K. offers a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the legendary bluesman's concert performances from different eras. The album is dominated by tracks from a 1978 London show and a 1998 appearance in Croydon. While King's voice is noticeably raspier on the later cuts, his piercing guitar work sounds undiminished by the years. A couple of tunes each from 1991 and '89 performances round out this release, which focuses largely on B.B.'s best known songs, like "How Blue Can You Get" and "The Thrill Is Gone" (the only song here to appear in two different versions).
Universal's 2009 set Live at the BBC contains 15 highlights from live B.B. King performances the BBC aired between the years of 1978 and 1991 -- a span that at first seems pretty impressive for a single-disc set, but a close inspection reveals that this 15-track collection covers just three specific dates, with one of those (a session for Andy Kershaw's Radio 1 program) yielding just two tracks tacked onto the end. The rest is split between a five-track set from the Hammersmith Odeon in 1978 and seven cuts from a 1991 show at Croydon's Fairfield Hall, and while there are a few notable differences between the sets -- B.B.'s guitar growls in 1978 and he sings U2's "When Love Comes to Town" in 1991 during a performance that is a bit more laid-back -- the two aren't all that different in form or feel: they still capture B.B. backed by a soul-spiked big band playing songs they play every night, so they know how to deliver them with precision and not a small degree of panache. This means the performances are certainly enjoyable, but they are familiar and not too easy to distinguish from the many latter-day live B.B. King recordings that are on the market -- which means there may not be much reason to get Live at the BBC if you have one of the other live B.B. sets, but there's nothing unpleasant about this at all. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine