B.B. King: All Cheers, No Tears

B.B. King's on the doorstep of 72, but the only signs of his age on stage at Great Woods this past Sunday were his all-gray natural and the gravel that dominates his voice when he's singing loud and hard over his eight-piece band. The old road warrior still plays more than a hundred dates a year, and he's lost a few pounds. But make no mistake, when he shakes his booty -- as he did during "Ain't Nobody Home" -- there's still a whole lotta shakin' goin' on.

A whole lotta playin', too. King remains a fierce guitarist whose ringing attack, clean diction, and big tone add up to one of the most satisfying sounds ever made on strings. When he joined his group after two crowd-warming numbers and spanked a few measures of notes out of his latest Lucille (as he names his Gibson guitars), the playing of skillful guitarists Robert Cray and Jay Geils, both of whom had appeared earlier in the festival-style line-up, seemed forgettable.

Indeed, Cray's whole set was a cipher save for the gritty singing and hard-wrung solos in his more-than-a-decade-old breakthrough hit "Smoking Gun." The pity's that Cray is a world-class soul singer and guitarist. Yet his material, especially from his new Sweet Potato Pie (Mercury), is often boring. His efforts to re-create the Memphis sound of the '60s and early '70s has resulted in formula writing. And he and his band sit too squarely back in their mid-tempo grooves. They never push the beat, and Cray's solos don't venture outside its lines. So there's no edge to their delivery. During most of their performances, it seems Cray and company are constitutionally incapable of getting excited about anything they're playing.

Not so King. Granted, sometimes he walks through a show. But there's always some spring in his step. This Great Woods performance -- although joyful and upbeat -- was not among his best. Most tunes were handled at such an intense tempo that the nuances of his singing and playing were sacrificed. So "Sweet Black Angel," usually sensuous, was rushed. King couldn't wrap his voice around the song's languid sexuality or play his most beautiful solos -- long strings of unhurriedly singing bent and vibrato'd notes that seem to carry us to a place where time stops dead. Ditto for his take on Willie Nelson's "Nightlife." Instead of his usual treatment of the tune as a rich, biographical banquet, we got a take-out order of chop suey. And King's career cornerstone, "The Thrill Is Gone," seemed an afterthought. He played the powerful number as he took his final bows and doled out pocketfuls of picks and souvenir chains to the front rows.

Maybe King's pep-pill performance was what the crowd needed after Cray's somnambulant set. Certainly it responded to his every turn with roars. But King is much more than a Dr. Feelgood, and deep blues needs some tears with its cheers.

-- Ted Drozdowski