Live in Cook County Jail/ B.B. King (1970)
I had no idea what the blues was. I don’t even recall thinking about it. I didn’t know B.B. King from Martin Luther King. But there was a song on the jukebox in the basement of the cheap student pub I worked at called The Thrill is Gone. I loved that song. A fellow cook named Ned one day borrowed me a record he thought I should listen to. It was B.B. King Live in Cook County Jail. The rest, as they say, is history.
I couldn’t quite get what was going on. B.B had this slightly feminine voice which often careened off into a falsetto cry. And every so often he would literally rip these short, shocking breaks off his guitar that left you anxious because they seemed like incomplete sentences. I didn’t know if I got it but I knew there was something in there that was speaking to me.
The record is a wonderful document of B.B’s concert for inmates of Chicago’s infamous Cook County Jail and includes classic performances of some of his classic songs. Particularly, Sweet Sixteen, Worry Worry and of course a stonking The Thrill is Gone. I put the album on a cassette and listened to it a lot. Ned and I often joked about all the agony in How Blue Can You Get
I gave you a brand-new Ford
You said I want a Cadillac
I bought you a ten dollar dinner
You said thanks for the snack
I let you live in my penthouse
You said it was just a shack
I gave you seven children
And now you want to give them back
Yes, I’ve been downhearted baby
Ever since the day we met
I said our love is nothing but the blues
Baby, how blue can you get?
I don’t know how long it took but pretty soon I was scrounging around for more and more blues: Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, Memphis Slim, Slim Harpo, John Lee Hooker. And then I turned around and went back down to the Delta and discovered Mississippi Fred McDowell, Son House and the possessed singing of Skip James. Because of Live in Cook County Jail I learned how the blues are the foundation of almost everything good in American music which in turn caused me to deepen my love for jazz and soul music and gospel and rock n roll. In fact, this record marks the beginning of my real appreciation of the depth and seriousness of American music.
njrabe 