VIA PRESS RELEASE | Deep Digs, in cooperation with the B. B. King Estate, Universal Music Enterprises and INA France, will issue a sensational, previously unreleased B.B. King album, In France: Live at the 1977 Nancy Jazz Pulsations Festival, as a limited two-LP set for RSD Black Friday on Nov. 29.
The powerful set, featuring a dynamic, stops-out performance by the masterful blues singer-guitarist and his potent seven-piece band, which will be heard on record for the first time, will see release as a two-CD set on Dec. 6.
The collection, released in cooperation with the B.B. King Estate, was recorded at the titular festival by the Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (ORTF), France’s national radio agency. It succeeds Deep Digs’ widely acclaimed debut release, gospel singer-guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s Live in France, which was drawn from ORTF’s archives at INA for the imprint’s Record Store Day bow this April.
Award-winning archival producer Zev Feldman, whose Deep Digs titles are released in partnership with Jordi Soley and Carlos Agustin Calembert of Spain’s Elemental Music, says, “I’ve been a lifelong fan of B.B. King, and it brings me so much joy to make this truly remarkable document captured at a wonderful period of B.B. King’s career available for the world to hear.”
The LP edition of the collection will be issued on 180-gram vinyl and mastered and cut by Matthew Lutthans at the Mastering Lab. LP and CD editions will both include liner notes by French writer Jean Buzelin, author of books about Tharpe, Skip James, Memphis Minnie, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and photos from the Nancy, France, performance by Jean-Marc Birraux, plus other vintage shots by Jean-Pierre Leloir and Ozier Muhammad.
In France was recorded at the apex of B.B. King’s commercial and professional eminence. A major star among Black American listeners since his first hit “3 O’Clock Blues” in 1951, he began to find a crossover audience among white listeners in the late ‘60s, after such rock stars as Eric Clapton and Michael Bloomfield cited him as a crucial influence on their own work. In 1970, he enjoyed the biggest hit of his career to date with the lush ballad “The Thrill Is Gone,” a No. 3 R&B smash and a No. 15 pop sensation.
The French recording, captured during King’s fifth trip to the Continent at the third biannual Nancy Jazz Pulsations Festival, takes an unprecedented look at an undocumented period of King’s career: his live work in the years following the disbanding of his longtime touring unit, Sonny Freeman and the Kingpins. That group supported him on two of the most celebrated live blues albums ever released, Live at the Regal (1967) and Blues Is King (1969). However, his concert releases of the mid- and late ‘70s eschewed the use of his working band and were restricted to duo dates with Bobby Bland cut with all-star combos.
King took the stage at Nancy in the east of France with a potent septet that was every bit the equal of his ‘60s outfit, and possibly even greater. Befitting the expansive format of a jazz festival, the group stretched out on such instrumental showpieces as “I Need My Baby,” “When I’m Wrong,” and “Have Faith.” Each member—tenor saxophonist Walter King (B.B.’s nephew and band director), alto saxophonist Cato Walker III, trumpeter Eddie Rowe, organist James Toney, guitarist Milton Hopkins, bassist Joe Turner, and drummer Calep Emphrey, Jr.—is afforded space to make a brilliant solo statement of his own..
As for King himself, he is heard at the very height of all his considerable powers. His extended solos on such tracks as his concert warhorse “Sweet Black Angel,” the Brook Benton ballad “It’s Just a Matter of Time,” the fresh original “I Got Some Outside Help (I Don’t Really Need),” and the instrumentals “I Need My Baby,” “When I’m Wrong,” and “Have Faith” show him in complete control of his beloved ES-335 Gibson guitar Lucille. And few of his contemporaneous recordings found him singing with similar force, passion, and commitment at every turn.
As Buzelin says in his notes, “The quality of B.B. King’s music, the beauty of his perfectly constructed improvisations, and the strength and conviction of his singing are the weapons that he would use throughout his career. No need for excess, overbidding, or sonic aggression. From his slow maturation to his global success, he would always present his music with sobriety—the choice of artists who defend a certain idea of creation, who do not seek to follow fashions.”
Even for those who think they know B.B. King’s music, In France will arrive as an unexpected revelation, and a stirring testament to the greatness of one of the incomparable masters of the blues.
