‘Giants B.B. King, Bland put other blues artists to shame’
by Ed Hersh, The Knickerbocker News, August 12, 1975
Seeing B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland at Saratoga Performing Arts Center Sunday night was like finding that Picasso original hanging in your living room is a fake.
When you hear these musical giants, the immediate reaction is to take all those Clapton, Allman Brothers, and John Mayall albums sitting on the shelf and file them in the garbage can.
Bland—he’s anything but—and King are perhaps the foremost representatives of black urban blues coming out of Chicago. They’ve both been around since the ’30s, and play with a cocky self-assuredness. But they’ve earned it, and the first time you hear them, you know it too.
Bland opened the set with one of the best backup groups to be heard anywhere—Mel Jackson and Mellow Fellows—and their opening instrumentals could have sustained the entire evening. They did some out-and-out modern jazz, and then some Philadelphia-style disco—Barry White’s “Satin Soul.”
Bland comes ambling out onto the stage, big and black and funky, and belts out an alternating succession of upbeat numbers and traditional urban blues, with all the familiar themes: love gone wrong, woman gone away, man going away.
The show isn’t canned or plastic, but it’s tight and well-rehearsed nonetheless. And then the band winds up, and Bland says “I’m gonna make room for the King!” and the crowd is on its feet.
King’s backup band, tighter and more structured than Bland’s, came out to warm up the audience, but they didn’t need much warming. Spirits were high, judging from the tenor of the crowd, the number of wine and beer bottles around, and the bittersweet smoke that filled the auditorium at times.
When King trucked out on stage, the audience was on its feet again, cheering and screaming, and King demonstrated once more why he is probably the best guitarist in the country. His blues riffs are classic—and so are many of his songs. His “Why I Sing the Blues” and “The Thrill is Gone” brought thundering ovations from the audience.
Hearing these men, especially King, makes the evolution of rock evident. All of a sudden, you realize David Clayton Thomas can’t outdo Bland’s blustery vocals, and bluesmen like Mayall and the late Gregg Allman are mere amateurs compared to King.
Fifteen years ago, the thought of two old bluesmen like Bland and King playing for a practically all-white audience would have been unheard of, simply because to most white audiences, King and Bland were unheard of.
But of late, they have been achieving long-deserved notoriety among the rock and roll set. And despite the small crowd—only about 4,000—the applause and cheering nearly brought the house down.
The appeal of these men is their genuineness—no hype or packaging. When B.B. King tells how he named his famous guitar “Lucille,” he talks of drafty black nightclubs in Arkansas. And while I’m sure most white audiences can’t relate to the way King “paid his dues,” they know he’s real. And in a world of Elton Johns, David Bowies, and Moog synthesizers, a real performer is a real treasure.
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