Record Review - 3 August 19 2000

Currently nestled in Billboard’s Top 10 albums, the highly anticipated joining of these two legendary blues guitarists/ vocalists is a relatively successful superstar summit. It would have been easy to record a few jams, sell a million discs on name value and call it a day. But thankfully this meeting of the minds is a tasteful and often lively project with none of the grandstanding evident when two headliners convene.

In an effort to reach a larger audience, roughly a third of the album is uninspired blues-rock, which is not surprisingly where the project stumbles. Tracks such as “Marry You” and “I Wanna Be” find King floundering, wallowing in sub-par material that the duo does its best to deliver with grace and style. A plodding six-minute version of “Hold On I’m Coming” is the album’s unequivocal low point.

Fortunately, seven pure blues tracks sparkle. Both artists perform at the peak of their powers while sympathetically sharing the vocal and instrumental spotlight. King revisits five cuts from his immense back catalog, and the two whip through acoustic versions of “Key to the Highway” and “Worried Life Blues” with a delight belying how often they must have performed these warhorses. An album-closing, slow and sleek rendition of the pop standard “Come Rain or Come Shine” finds the crooning pair dueting and trading heartfelt lead vocals. The mix and production clearly separates vocals and guitars between the speakers, making it easy to distinguish each player, and the pristine sound is so clear you can hear King’s rings hitting the frets.

B.B. King performs at Chastain Park Amphitheater, Aug. 18-19.