I've Got A Mind To Ramble

Jivin' with B.B.

By Keith S. Clements

It has been three-and-a-half years since B.B. King last thrilled the crowd at the Palace. He has received extensive recognition since then, from celebrating his 80th birthday on September 16, to publication of two recent biographies plus the groundbreaking for a museum in his honor in Indianola, Mississippi. B.B. has reached the stature in the blues that Louis Armstrong achieved in jazz.

The comparison between this concert on October 1 and the previous one was disappointing. The crowd three years ago was more racially mixed, while this time it was predominantly white. Was it the price of the ticket or has B.B. completely crossed over to another audience? B.B.'s concert had lots of spit and polish but it also had too much jiving. As the elder statesman of the blues, B.B. has every right to sit down when he performs, but what was lacking was his guitar, Lucille. After a couple of warm up instrumentals by his tight band of veteran musicians, B.B. came out and briefly introduced his daughter, Shirley King. There were his familiar standards like "Why I Play The Blues," "I Need You So Bad" and "Bad Case of Love," but most of his guitar work was limited to some sparse opening and closing chords.

B.B. built a nice rapport with the audience with stories and comments but it was overdone with references about getting old, eating supper instead of dinner and the guys singing "Ain't That Just Like A Woman." He uses a lot of gestures like cupping his hands behind his ears to get a response from the audience, twirling his index finger over his head to get his band's attention and pounding his fist into his palm to make a point.

Typically, midway in his show, the horn players exit the stage leaving just three guitars, drums and keyboards. This is my favorite part: back to the basics. King's first instrumental in that section had some soulful string bending. During the rare moments he did play, it was the ecstasy of familiarity: his deep, rich tone filling the theater, the measured spaces between the notes and his trademark finger-shaking trill. Then, B.B. started jiving again. For me it was frustrating, for I came to hear Lucille. The one-and-a-half hour show reached a climatic ending with "The Thrill Is Gone" and B.B. throwing picks and trinkets to the VIP's in the front rows.

The pleasant surprise was the opening act, Slick Ballinger, who energized and evangelized the audience with his hardcore Mississippi Blues. Slick is a fast-rising star on the blues scene, having placed second in the 2004 International Blues Challenge in Memphis and getting the Albert King Award as the best guitarist during the competition. Slick's powerful falsetto voice made the plaster figures quake and the stars twinkle in the Palace. The great Delta Harp player, Blind Mississippi Morris, was a member of Ballinger's band, the Soul Blues Boys, which also included a drummer and bassist. Morris' traditional straight-ahead blues harp kept Slick from getting too flamboyant. Nevertheless, this young showman was all over the stage and briefly out in the audience, playing "Rosa Lee" and "Jumping The Juke House Down" until he broke a string on his guitar and switched to his other axe. Ballinger followed with an original "Brotherhood Blues" and a Willie Dixon song made famous by Magic Sam "You Don't Love Me." He closed out his fifty-minute set with his gospel-based song, "Answer To The Blues." The Reverend Slick converted the theater full of "who dat" skeptics to spellbound believers.