B.B. King: There Is Always One More Time

David McGee.

Backbeat Books (Publication Date: August, 2005) pp.352, b&w illustrations. ISBN: 0-87930-843-5 ($17.95)

For the MTV generation, B.B. King is the blues. People who have never heard the names, let alone the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson and Charlie Christian (King's inspirations) and who would not be seen dead holding a CD with the word ‘blues' in its title, know who B.B. King is and may even know a little of his music. With platinum selling albums and, until recently, a relentless touring schedule (he's only slowed a bit; 26 up-coming gigs in August and September 2005 are listed on his website), with appearances on TV in the USA as a person with diabetes, and with TV appearances in front of world-wide audiences at the likes of Live Aid, B.B. King has a public persona unmatched by anyone in the blues field, past or present. He has played sold out shows in South America, opened the Hard Rock Café in Beijing and with his 80 th birthday on the horizon, is about to be the subject of a welter of books and stuff to commemorate the event.

‘There Is Always One More Time' is the first volume of Lives in Music, a new series of books from Backbeat that seeks to produce volumes that mesh biography with discography. If this one is an example of what is to follow, then they're on a winner. The aim is that each book in the series will appeal to music fans and to musicians who want to understand how their favourite artists and producers have used the studio as a creative tool in shaping personal experience into enduring art.

This is not a traditional biography, although there is core biographical stuff spread through out it. The author, David McGee, was not given access to B.B. for an interview, but has, nevertheless, made much out of previously published material and the book comes with some very nice little pen-pictures of other artists, including Muddy, Bobby Bland, Blind Lemon, T-Bone Walker, Nat ‘King' Cole, Sam Cooke and many more. McGee has also conducted some fascinating interviews with key figures in Riley (B.B.) King's life, producers, musicians and A&R consultants. However, at its core, this is really an extended discography, with much enhanced liner-notes; one which uses as its nucleus King's in-print albums and relates the (often untold) stories behind their making. A critique of each album is accompanied with full line-up details coupled with interviews and comment from producers, engineers, arrangers and musicians and some other key figures. There's some captivating material here.

Bill Szymczyk discusses, in depth, the four albums he produced for B.B., including ‘Completely Well', which yielded King's breakthrough hit, ‘The Thrill Is Gone'. Producer Stewart Levine recounts the outlandish and rather eccentric sessions for the 1981 Grammy-winning album ‘There Must Be A Better World Somewhere' and tells how he connected King with the Crusaders for two jazz-influenced albums breathing life and direction into B.B.'s music and career. Eric Clapton speaks about the sessions for the multi-platinum album ‘Riding With The King', while Ace Records A&R consultant John Broven offers entertaining insights into King's early recordings.

All in all, the book is a well-written, occasionally fascinating and critically important document for anyone interested in King's work or in the plethora of absorbing facts that accompany his life. (BB with bad timing? Hard to countenance, but apparently as a young man, and after some time singing and playing solo in and around Memphis , King [like John Lee Hooker and others] had a problem working with a band, as the need for synchronisation in chord changes was difficult for him. Robert Lockwood Jr. is cited as saying: “His time was apeshit. I had a hard time trying to teach him.” Lockwood claims it was his idea to put a horn section in the band [making it eight pieces], thus forcing King to keep time: “I told the man to put eight pieces with him and he would have to listen to the band.”)

Complaints? Well, I have only seen a pre-publication version that might be altered, but, with hundreds of song, album titles, people's names, locations of sessions and gigs and so on in the text, and bearing in mind that this will be (already is) a research tool for some people, an index would help enormously. Nevertheless, this is a valuable contribution to blues literature and a definitive model for those following McGee in future volumes in the series.

~Ian McKenzie