The Soul Of B.B. King

In a jaw-gnashing exercise of discographical loggerheads, The Soul of B.B. King was just a retitled version of a King album previously released on the Crown label, B.B. King. Further muddling the record-keeping, The Soul of B.B. King would appear on both the United and Custom labels (both of which were, like Crown, budget imprints of the Modern Records company). Basically, the story's this: when B.B. King left the Modern Records stable in the early '60s, Modern scrambled to put out King material on their own label on numerous compilations. The unimaginatively titled B.B. King was one such exercise, appearing on the budget Crown imprint in 1963. The ten tracks were a mish-mash of sessions spanning the early '50s to the early '60s, none of the songs among King's more familiar. However, despite its exploitative nature (and brevity), it's not at all a bad listen. The selections include some real tough, swinging numbers with organ and horns, even if some of the tracks (like "You Won't Listen" and "Shake Yours") suffer from harsh upper-end distortion that should have been avoided in the original recording. In a different style, "Boogie Rock (aka House Rocker)" (an alternate take of a 1955 single) is a smoking instrumental. This is the album was later reissued under the different title The Soul of B.B. King on both the United and Custom labels. ~ Richie Unterberger