B. B. King - Best of the Black Blues

I hate renowned great artists. Not because they are overrated, though sometimes they are. I hate the way their body of work requires such research. I like to start getting into bands at the beginning, with the first album. Even if I can’t, I need to know that I am listening to a document of an artist in a particular period. I have nothing but contempt for artists with long careers who put out albums that are 90% crap and 10% good. It feels dishonest and wrong to get snookered into an album by a single, and a compilation of singles is no better, since singles are so often written by others. Things get worse with greatly renowned artists, as record companies scramble to cash in on their success by churning out “albums” full of already released material that is essentially randomly placed on that record. With particularly well regarded artists it becomes likely that the CD you purchase is not only not an original album, it is often a collection compiled of things that have fallen into the public domain, or even something put together by pirates.

Such is the case with my B. B. King album, Best of the Black Blues, though in this case I owe my possession of this psychic abortion to my mother. Mom, in a fit of pretty awesome cunning, at one point purchased an entire years Christmas presents from a online seller in Hong Kong. To her surprise all of it was boot legged, but hey, it was like $0.30 per album, so I’m not gonna blame her, and I got a pretty sweet copy of the classic anime Outlaw Star as a result, so no complaints. She’s a great Mom

On the other hand, this album is garbage. Not the music, of course. B. B. King is a legend, and listening to the music one can see why. Though it is more polished that I usually expect from the blues, his talent on the guitar and the craftsmanship of the songs is wondrous. Why pisses me off is that this is so clearly a pirate copy, and so I can’t do a real review of this. The “album” shows up on no internet searches except on illegal download sites. Amazon will not list it. The fine print on the back is in Cyrillic. The liner notes contain lyrics, but no additional information. At least compilations usually contain charming anecdotes about the one time the ad executive who put it together met the great man himself. But this? This does NOTHING to further my quest for authenticity! And the worst thing is that I am going to have to keep it for now as it is my only B.B. King recording. Bah. Curse you all.