B.B. King - King of the Blues [Spain Import]

King of the Blues lives up to its title, a 1960 set of B.B. King's stinging guitar and big-hearted vocals, presented here as a remastered 180 gram Spanish import.

By the end of the 1950s, King was a star of the R&B circuit, playing an astonishing number of nights a year and refining the singing, vibrato-rich guitar style that would go on to shape generations of blues and rock players. This album captures him at full strength, backed by a punchy band that gives the songs a swinging, uptown polish without ever softening their edge.

Songs like (I've) Got a Right to Love My Baby, Long Nights (The Feeling They Call the Blues) and I'm King show off everything that made him special: the conversational interplay between voice and guitar, the economy of every phrase and the way a single bent note could say more than a whole verse.

His guitar, the famous Lucille, never shows off for its own sake. Each lick lands like a sentence in an ongoing conversation with the listener, and his voice moves from a wounded plea to a joyful shout in a heartbeat.

For blues lovers building a collection, this is an essential slice of early B.B. King, the sound of a master who had already found his voice and kept sharpening it.