B.B. King
Live At The Apollo

How many times have we/heard about BB King...? And how many albums have been titled "Live At The Apollo"? Maybe more than those recorded at the Budokan or Madison Square, or around there... And even thanks to the air of familiarity, one might risk looking at this wonderful live with semi-attention, leaving it semi-unnoticed, perhaps the last great album of the nonetheless commendable BB, one who was saddened when, having already turned eighty, the doctor imposed that he should not exceed 250 (!!) concerts per year.

In short, someone who lived through music, not philosophized about it, who played the guitar, and didn't "embellish" it by showing how many notes could fit in a measure: he always put in few, and always the same ones, more or less; those that Rava would call the "necessary notes". Very, very rarely did he stray from a pentatonic. In short, on paper, every city of at least fifteen thousand inhabitants has at least a couple of guitarists technically superior to him. But... but there's a but, and anyone who plays with a bit of modesty and wisdom knows it very well: try playing those four notes, like he did with Lucille, if you can... And of course, Lucille is his Gibson, and it shouldn't even need to be said. His true companion of a lifetime. Many wives and women, but the only true one is Lucille, many children and daughters, but the only true one, again, is her: Lucille.

BB King's sound is not the sound of Blues, it is "a" sound of Blues. If I had to say who fully embodied the true soul of the blues... well... I'd fearlessly say John Lee Hooker. BB too often ventures into Soul, not rarely into other genres, and sometimes some escapades have rightly been accused of excess "easy" (albums like "Six Silver Strings" are frankly neglectable). But BB has undoubtedly marked an era and a sound. He taught an infinite number of guitarists and musicians in general, carrying himself around like a true missionary of Black Music. Those who saw him live, especially when he was really in shape (the last time I saw him hold the stage for over two hours, with a theater dancing from the first to the last note, as if it were Harlem, was in 1995 at the Smeraldo in Milan) know what energy passed from the stage to the audience as soon as he went up, heavy and very light, always smiling, and plugged the cable into the amplifier making an unprofessional "thunder", like we all do in our cellars with friends. And how that Gibson, seemingly slightly distorted but actually with a lightning-fast and very recognizable sound, became singable but never boring, already by the second/third solo.

Really: I remember people, in the throes of enthusiastic delirium, singing even the solos at one point. And on that occasion, in Milan, there was the group that had been following him for some time and that would continue to follow him for much longer (someone is surely still there today). While on this album we have an orchestra with an improbable cigarette-loving name, but which has an enviable "groove" and some show-stoppers (Plas Johnson on tenor sax, leader Jene Harris, guitarist Kenny Burrell) who mark the original sound well, but without any intrusiveness. And here, then, are truly memorable versions of some classics near and far (it was 1990), starting with that "When Love Comes To Town" originally performed with U2 on "Rattle And Hum", but here accelerated to make it extremely "soul" and certainly a perfect opening track, reaching the inevitable "Sweet Sixteen", "The Thrill Is Gone" and "Guess Who" (the latter in the absolute best version of his entire discography).

Overall, a short album, single and not double...in short: one of those live albums that from the '90s on would no longer be seen (with very rare exceptions). An absolute and perfect pearl, capturing a monument to the black music of the twentieth century at the height of its form and vocal and instrumental maturity. An album to have, because even if it consists of duplicates, triplicates and all you want, it sounds fresh and new as if each track were composed the day before and performed for the first time. The album of a great old man, incredibly young.