Easy Listening Blues

"Easy Listening Blues" is a bit of an oxymoron, especially in the hands of B.B. King, who might be smooth and urbane in some respects, but who's rarely recorded music that could be categorized as easy listening. That's the title that Crown used, however, for this all-instrumental 1962 collection. Just prior to leaving Modern for ABC, King did a lot of recording that Modern milked for sides to put out after he'd left the company, and the liner notes to the Ace CD reissue of the album speculate that these tracks were laid down in late 1961 as part of this process. Since a big part of the pleasure of listening to B.B. King is hearing his voice, and hearing the songs he wrote and interpreted, an all-instrumental album -- no matter how competently done -- is almost bound to sound like something's missing. And although this is a competent record, it's got to rank as one of his less essential efforts, the ten numbers often sounding like warm-up tunes or background generic blues club filler, hastily ground out to meet a quota.