Review Summary: “Ain’t no-one sing to me like Lucille does.” - B.B. King
I’m not normally one to look back at music for the sole purpose of feeding nostalgia, but I’m also not one to dismiss that ‘everything had to come from somewhere’. Of all the albums I hear every year (consecutive to the next year...and the year after that, and the year... yeah, you get it) there are very few that I return to without the regret of missing music in the present. For that reason,
Lucille holds an important place in shaping just “how” I listen to music today and specifically, B.B. King’s music brings together memorable family moments (even if it’s in a roundabout way), a love for guitar, for melody, and the melding of simple features into one of the sixties best studio recordings. For whatever reason,
Lucille makes me think of home and the man who spawned me.
Now forgive me a little - I’m probably about to get a bit more personal than most of the guys reading this would care to read. I’ve heard this album for as long as I can remember, and parts of B.B. Kings’ music is engraved into my very being. These days I’m a grown man. A little reckless, considerably full of myself (I call this confidence in case you’re wondering) and still prone to occasional moments of doubt that come here and there without taking over completely. I’m not going to say I “got” my father while I was growing up. When he worked, he was gone before the sun rose and home a little after it fell, he drank a bit (just as much as any respectable Aussie worth his sweat would) and did not mind a moment or two to help himself wind down when he was home. But what I didn’t realize then (that I do now), is that my old man has a deep, but casual love for music. I’m not saying he was a genius composer, but he could modify most rock-radio lyrics into an amalgamation of crude, yet undeniably charming rhymes without missing a beat. He also couldn’t (and still doesn’t) play an instrument - whether it be a guitar, saxophone, trumpet or triangle… but when any given Talking Heads or U2 song popped up on his garage radio, the whole block listened too. Even more impressively, his singing is somehow always the louder. Put simply; he’s a fan of the music he likes.
Let me explain; through my eyes, my old man is a person of “moments”. He rarely thought too far forwards unless it was necessary and I can count the fingers on a single hand the amount of times I’ve seen him shed a tear (most too personal to be shared on an internet forum). But the joys of his life have been placed in front of him and in those moments, he enjoyed them to the nth (his first drink with his now legal-aged son, surprise tickets to his favourite band, or the first cuddles of his grandchildren), making the most of any situation. It’s now unavoidable that any time I hear a track from B.B. Kings 1968 effort,
Lucille I hear my ol’ man belting U2’s “When Love Goes To Town” line-for-line. Music wasn’t embedded in me by any stage of learning at home, rather it was given to me for enjoyment, regardless of what was happening outside of the speakers blasting from the garage.
Now that I’m a father, in his shoes, yet socks of my own, I’ve come to understand my dad differently to how I knew him when I was younger. And yeah, thanks dad. I more-or-less get it now.
The soulful empowerment that comes from
Lucille resonates vocally from Mr. King and the signature vibrato and trill of the guitar’s namesake. The album itself is a dedication to thick, yet airy blues filled with quirk and real-world relatives, staying thoroughly intimate through its production. At thirty-seven minutes, the nine-tracked record isn’t a lengthy export, but it's replay value is priceless.
The opening piece highlights the album’s main theme. Lush almost-spoken word tells a tale of how B.B. King’s famous guitar got its name. The title track wanders, but stays firmly rooted in the “how” things came to be. King states that ‘Lucille’ saved his life, and the music bleeds to that effect. Considering that the track itself teeters on ten minutes, “Lucille” is a pleasant affair with a perfect run-time, reveling in the glory of memory and well placed guitar licks. Moments of brass fill the gaps between King’s casual spoken word and his interaction with the band that backs the record. B.B. King’s music takes on a familiarity with the listeners, taking blues gold, some pomp and a lot of soul into every rendition on the album. Tracks like “Country Girl” combine relate-able context of relationship while the album’s closing piece, “Watch Yourself” flips the tale on its head, with King explaining the thoughts of a partner leaving him. Sure, the topic of love and heartbreak is a-typical of blues (King’s U2 collaboration is just another example of that), but here it is expertly used within the realms of pentatonic scaling and mid-paced swinging tempo.
When considered in its entirety,
Lucille is not a perfect album. But its natural imperfections help identify the soul and realism of a premiere 60s blues record. Writing an album about a guitar, with
the guitar may not be realistically compelling to listeners - but the ability to craft blues tropes into a legacy of lasting value stands well above it. B.B. King left behind a catalog of lush sounds developed from whatever was in front of him at the time, and it’s
Lucille that speaks to generations past, present and future.
