B.B. King - The Life Of Riley is powerful, insightful and heart-warming feature documentary about legendary Blues man, B.B. King. Narrated by Morgan Freeman and featuring contributions by, amongst others, Eric Clapton, Bono, Ringo Starr, Carlos Santana, Slash, Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger and Bruce Willis. The OST was developed by following the music used in the movie. The original 2CD tracklisting contains 26 career spanning songs as featured in the film, in the same order they appear in the movie.

This album was released on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the North Sea Jazz Festival. It contains live recordings of John Patitucci, Spyro Gyra, Russ Freeman & The Rippingtons, B.B. King, Chick Corea, Robben Ford and Gary Burton. All songs were recorded live during various editions of this festival.

B.B. King is the most influential guitarist in the instrument's electric history. His string-bending, vibrato, and phrasing are the raw material that players as diverse as Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and Pink Floyd's David Gilmour have spun into their own epic solos. This CD draws on King's '60s efforts for the defunct Kent label, tapping rarely heard instrumental tracks to present a crash course in his unique fusion of country blues, the single-string soloing perfected by Lonnie Johnson, and the swinging phrasing of jazz guitar pioneers like Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. Tunes like "Slidin' and Glidin'" and "Calypso Jazz" are tickets to blues heaven.

A decent but short (nine songs) late '60s set, with somewhat sparser production than he'd employ with the beefier arrangements of the "Thrill Is Gone" era. Brass and stinging guitar plays a part on all of the songs, leading off with the eight-minute title track, a spoken narrative about his famous guitar.

Recorded in Cannes France 1983. An amazing live recording of B.B. King. Some of his best versions of songs are on this disc. Like the ever so sweet guitar playing on "You Know I Love You". Or "Caldonia" with the altered break parts with gives the whole song a heavier groove and B.B. a chance to really sing out loud. A really good and in some ways forgotten record.

This unusual compilation from the Kool Jazz at Midem Festival combines parts of three separate sets. The Dave Brubeck Quartet with clarinetist Bill Smith, bassist Chris Brubeck and drummer Randy Jones, has the most interesting program, utilizing an electronic delay along with Smith's clarinet to add a new touch to "Lover Man," offering an energetic version of "Blue Rondo a la Turk" and introducing a recent work by Brubeck, the very swinging "Ol' Bill Basie" which showcases some fine playing by the leader and some choice bass trombone by son Chris. Guitarist Pat Metheny joins the Heath Brothers for "Move To The Groove; " Metheny's bluesy guitar and Jimmy Heath's soulful tenor sax work well together. B. B. King's set is at best average and an odd choice to include on what is predominantly a jazz record.

Prison performances are sort of a standard for blues singers, and it just doesn't get any better than this - B.B. King playing his classics live at the San Quentin Correctional facility. Here King is playing to a truly captive audience offering up such classics as "The Thrill is Gone," "Sweet 16," "In the Heat of the Night," and "Nobody Loves Me But My Mother." In the intro to that last selection King explains to the inmates that while the blues was not just about hard times, some of the tunes could be pretty depressing. "Some of it can be pretty down alley. Like I'm fixing to do right now. I'm going all the way down to the bottom." Yet he also encourages the audience to go on and boogie off some of the uptempo tracks. This is music from the heart, and you can just feel the soul of the artist…

When B.B. King is cajoled into covering the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City," you know material's in dangerously short supply. It's the lead number on this rather undistinguished album, cut with most of his road band of the time. One staple of his live show, the sentimental blues ballad "Guess Who," came from this set.

B.B. King is more than just one of the greatest masters of electric blues guitar; he is also an extraordinarily gifted singer. His talents on his instrument are so great that they tend to eclipse his soulful and sophisticated singing voice, but any who might possibly have doubted his ability will do so no more upon hearing Heart to Heart. On this 1994 release, he joins pop-jazz balladeer Diane Schuur for ten surprising tracks. It is a very moody album, with the overall vibe being mainly of the drown-your-broken-heart-in-gin variety. Some of the string and synth arrangements come off as a little unnecessary, as the music is ably framed by piano, guitar, bass, and drums. However, producer Phil Ramone should be credited for minimizing the schmaltzy moments on Heart to Heart as much as possible, as the music is already treading the fine line between sentiment and drivel…

The plodding rhythms laid down by a coterie of British rock stars for this set make one long for B.B. King's road-tested regular band. But it was the fashion in 1971 to dispatch American blues legends to London to record mediocre LPs with alleged rock royalty (the lineup here includes Ringo Starr, Peter Green, Alexis Korner, and Klaus Voorman).

This impressive, impeccably packaged four-CD box set focuses solely on B.B. King's 1950s and 1960s recordings for the Modern family of labels. That was a period that basically encompassed the vast majority of his work prior to 1962, though he did a few non-Modern sides before signing with ABC Paramount in early 1962 and did a few other sides for Modern in the mid-'60s. So this is basically a box-set overview of King's early career, one that saw him score many R&B hits and build a career as a blues legend, even as the blues were falling out of fashion in favor of rock and soul. As many tracks as there are here - 106 in all, four of them previously unreleased - this isn't a catchall roundup of everything the prolific King did for the label…