B B King

Malcolm

A good introduction is last years (I think) album called Riding with the King - features Clapton.

Any number of complilations - your local library (assuming it has CDs) is a good and cheap place to start in order to establish which period you prefer. He has been around so long everyone will have their favourite!

Enjoy

Malcolm

Interesting choice, as I thought that "Riding with the King" showed both Eric and B B King sounding tired, as if just cruising and not trying. I certainly find this the case with most recent Clapton when compared to the Beano album or Cream.

Malcolm

I guess it's each to his own, much as I enjoy BB from circa 1980 - 85 I enjoy that particular album

They probably are, thinking about it I put it on to relax to, usually late in the evening at low levels (or through phones)so I guess as I am tired.........

Live at the Regal and Cook County Jail are excellent. This recent box set is masterful. I've been trying to get a decent King boxset for years and highly recommend it.

http://www.acerecords.co.uk/gotrt/june02/aboxcd8.html

John

Another excellent live recording by BB, from mid 60's, is 'Blues is King'. If you like BB, have you listened to Albert King? His live album from late 60's, 'Live Wire/Blues Power' is superb.

I rather enjoyed 'King of the Blues 89' when it came out.

(Warning, it has some funky bass stuff. But Lucille still rules)

Paul

BB and EC sound like they're cruising on Riding with the King? Perhaps it's hard not to after 50 years but I can't hear that in the acoustic versions of Key to the Highway and Worried Life Blues.

I have numerous albums back to Live at the Regal, and play regularly and enjoy

Let the Good Times Roll (Louis Jordan standards)
Blues on the Bayou (RwtK positively racy by comparison)
and best of all
Blues Summit (esp You Shook Me with John Lee Hooker, Little by Little with Lowell Fulson and Since I met you Baby with Katie Webster)

in fact I'm going to play it now!

For Crusaders style eighties stuff try

Midnight Believer
Take it Home

Above all enjoy!

I picked up Live at the Regal over the weekend... maybe I'm just not a B.B. King fan. The crowd seems to be the highlight of the show here. The back-up band is in-tune and energetic, but way in the background. B.B. himself comes across as a much better singer than guitarist. The whole falsetto thing he does on "Worry, Worry" is downright eerie, and worth the price of the disc. But I don't feel the songs here are long enough to really let him stretch as a guitarist.

Maybe I'll look for Cook County Jail.

jay

yes, it is the guitar I was looking for. A lot of my BB King records have too many trumpets on them. There again, I think any trumpets on a record is too many, and that includes the Miles Davis quintet!

malcolm

Get some vintage Freddie King, Danny Gatton or Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters.

w/r/t Live at the Regal, give it time. It is a brilliant album.

Markus
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I can concur with John C, BB King, The Vintage Years box set on Ace is a sensational sample of his ealier output on the RPM, Kent and Crown labels. Sound quality is extremely good and the enclosed book is well worth the entrance fee. There are plenty of notes describing the painstaking efforts that went into finding the best tapes from which to re-master the tracks and the whole effort reeks of class. Highly recommended!

Richard the administrator of cool.

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Originally posted by Rockingdoc:
Richard the administrator of cool.

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hmmmm.....

Just to add a bit more about the Ace catalogue, BB King fans are very well served and I even see in their latest 2003 catalogue they have issued "Live at the Regal" on LP! I think I'll order a copy....

Seriously though, if you want to expand your musical horizons then Ace is a great place to look. Just make sure your credit card can take it though before you go wild!

Now let's see, Joe Simon, P Funk all-stars, Albert King, CCR, Booker T & the MGs, Country Joe and the Fish.... there's something here for everybody - it's gonna be expensive!

You could also try The King R 'n' B Box Set out on the 20th of this month.

Richard, I note you don't list your sistem in your profile, care to enlighten us?

Cheers

Dave

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Originally posted by Dave J:
Richard, I note you don't list your sistem in your profile, care to enlighten us?

Cheers

Dave

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Er.... Naim

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Er.... Naim

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Oh yeah? Perhaps a little more detail......

Dave

OK, OK. It's a tough call because I have three separate systems on the go and in my role at Naim it's important that I get a good deal of "hands on" with as many products as possible...

I'm lucky enough to have a wife who felt that converting a barn into a dedicated music room might be a good idea. I think the sight of 20,000 odd LPs was getting her down and now at least I have somewhere to give them all shelf space.

Currently the house "family" system is undergoing preparation for an AV2 based surround sound set-up but otherwise it's a moving feast.

The constants are (as I'm sure you've guessed) the turntables; Michell Orbe, Thorens TD 125 MkII and (soon arriving) LP12. With a very wide range of cartridges from B-M L0.4 to Ortophon SPU!!!

[This message was edited by Richard Dane on THURSDAY 09 January 2003 at 16:43.]

20,000 LP's

Respect due

Julian
Yes I have "Live in London" on vinyl.
Indianola Mississippi Seeds on vinyl
and some very very early stuff on an ACE CD.
I had the one with Clapton, but gave it away.

That's my lot, but I have taken careful notes from the above posts and expect a severe credit-card beating soon. Unfortunately, I have to pay the tax man this month too.

malcolm

malcolm

Richard
20,000 LPs

I'm not in the same league, but still have trouble remembering what I've got. Do you catalogue them, what system/software do you use. I find that I am starting to buy albums and particularly CDs that I've forgotten I've already got. I think I need a catalogue that could be downloaded to a PDA. Excel seems a bit bulky.

malcolm

Rockingdoc,

It's ridiculous, I know. I'll need to make like a cat and get nine lives to truly appreciate all of them. When I moved into the "music room" I actuallay found that even with two fully-shelved floors there still wasn't enough room, so many duplicates were either given away or sold or swapped with other fellow collectors around the world. I think it's now been whittled down to around 14,000 or thereabouts...

I went through a long period of "completism", i.e. I tried to complete my collections of Decca SXLs, EMI ASDs and SAXs. I got about 90% of the way there but found that I didn't have enough time to listen to everything and it was getting harder and harder to find vinyl in mint condition (or for less than a Kings ransom!). Still, it's nice to know that if I do want to listen to something then it's more than likely I have a really nice copy to play.

I'm almost ashamed to say that I still don't have a definitive listing - so little time and really I'd much rather just sit down and listen to music. I use a range of Excel spreadsheets and that seems to do just what I want. There are a variety of packages available on the internet but they're pretty expensive for what they do - I guess it all depends on what you want. Amazingly I find that it's pretty easy to identify what I don't have so rarely do I buy a duplicate unless it's a particularly "mint" copy. The Brain, our own personal Supercomputer....

I must admit that Paul has had me playing around with CD players of late so vinyl has had to take a temporary back seat. Luckily Naim CD players have an uncanny knack of making you forget about Digital's weaknesses and let you focus on it's strengths. I'm enjoying CD which, until I had a Naim CD player in the main system, I can't say was the case.

Now, where's that Aro....?

Malcolm
Another vote here for Music Collector. I looked at several others but it seems to do its job admirably, is well supported and relatively inexpensive - give it a try!

Richard
Thank you for sharing with us some insight into the musical life of a Naim Moderator - fascinating stuff, specially the 20K pcs of vinyl. Serious respect due and offered without hesitation!!
Are you sure you can afford the time to work?
David

The recent postings raise 2 interesting (for me) issues.

Firstly, the seeming reluctance of naim employees to give details of what systems they have for personal use. Most of us are happy to do so but why their reticence? Is it because they don't use naim or if they do, is it because the systems they have might reveal something of their salary levels?

Secondly, and this applies to quite a few contributors - if you have X thousands of CDs, vinyl, whatever it is almost certain, if you work for a living, that you would never hear all of it more than once. For example, a 20,000 vinyl collection would take about 3 years to listen to.

I have about 500 CDs and there are probably 200 that I listen to regularly. Friends have far more than me but listen regularly to the same proportion. So why collect in 10 or more times that amount? Is it for music or the joy of ownership? or something else?

cheers

Nigel

p.s. any chance of a spell check facility

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Originally posted by Nigel Cavendish:
So why collect in 10 or more times that amount? Is it for music or the joy of ownership? or something else?

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Possibly as an investment strategy to augment the Naim company pension scheme.

David

Nigel
I'm sure we've all heard tales of the lunatics with £30k systems and only six sound-effects CDs.

For me it is not about ownership, simply discovering new music to listen to.

I don't have as many as Richard, but still enjoy saying to guests "what would you like to hear" and usually being able to play it.

malcolm