Riding with the King

1	Riding with the King 4:23
2	Ten Long Years / B.B. King 4:40
3	Key to the Highway / B.B. King 3:39
4	Marry You / B.B. King 4:59
5	Three O'Clock Blues / B.B. King 8:36
6	Help the Poor / B.B. King 5:06
7	I Wanna Be / B.B. King 4:45
8	Worried Life Blues / B.B. King 4:25
9	Days of Old / B.B. King 3:00
10	When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer / B.B. King 7:09
11	Hold on! I'm Comin' / B.B. King 6:20
12	Come Rain or Come Shine / B.B. King 4:11

Barnes & Noble

The coming together of artists as distinctive as Eric Clapton and B.B. King is a major event, rife with expectations from even the most cynical blues fan. And thankfully, Riding with the King is true to the best of both B.B. King and Clapton's recordings. The John Hiatt-penned title cut finds both artists singing and playing guitar along with Andy Fairweather-Low and Doyle Bramhall II, the son of Stevie Ray Vaughan's songwriting partner Doyle Bramhall. All that six-string work is a bit over the top, but then it's the perfect tune for excess, and King's spoken lyrics about leaving Mississippi at ten years old with "a suit cut sharp as a razor and a heart of gold" makes it seem like the tune was written just for him. The set settles down for a classic version of King's "Ten Long Years," with the King taking on vocals while Clapton, Fairweather, and Bramhall play guitar. Both superstars go into acoustic mode for a lean versions of "Key to the Highway" and "Worried Life" while their "Three O'Clock Blues," "When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer," and "Help the Poor" recall King's laid-back electric blues circa 1968. From King's jump-blues era in the '50s comes a killer version of "Days of Old" with Clapton so at ease and energized by this audience with the King that he actually growls and shouts his shared vocals (as he also does on the cover of the Sam & Dave hit "Hold On, I'm Comin'" and several other cuts. Two Bramhall-penned tunes have that big-arena rock feel --"I Wanna Be" and "Marry You" -- obviously included to keep Clapton's fans interested, but King's mammoth voice holds its own in the fray. The set ends with a lovely, string-laden version of the Mercer/Arlen standard "Come Rain or Come Shine." Though the tune has previously been righteously bluesified by Ray Charles and James Booker, the Clapton/King rendition is infused with just the right amount of passionate devotion. Clapton and his frequent collaborator Simon Climie produced Riding with the King for Clapton's label, with their focus on paying tribute to the King of the Blues without getting on their hands and knees. The result is King's most exciting work in nearly a decade. Roberta Penn

All Music Guide

The potential for a collaboration between B.B. King and Eric Clapton is enormous, of course, and the real questions concern how it is organized and executed. This first recorded pairing between the 74-year-old King and the 55-year-old Clapton was put together in the most obvious way: Clapton arranged the session using many of his regular musicians, picked the songs, and co-produced with his partner Simon Climie. That ought to mean that King would be a virtual guest star rather than earning a co-billing, but because of Clapton's respect for his elder, it nearly works the other way around. The set list includes lots of King specialties -- "Ten Long Years," "Three O'Clock Blues," "Days of Old," "When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer" -- as well as standards like "Hold on I'm Coming" and "Come Rain or Come Shine," with some specially written and appropriate recent material thrown in, so King has reason to be comfortable without being complacent. The real danger is that Clapton will defer too much; though he can be inspired by a competing guitarist such as Duane Allman, he has sometimes tended to lean too heavily on accompanists such as Albert Lee and Mark Knopfler when working with them in concert. That danger is partially realized; as its title indicates, Riding With the King is more about King than it is about Clapton. But the two players turn out to have sufficiently complementary, if distinct, styles so that Clapton's supportive role fills out and surrounds King's stinging single-string playing. (It's also worth noting that there are usually another two or three guitarists on each track.) The result is an effective, if never really stunning, work. William Ruhlmann

Rolling Stone

...as celebrity blues summits go, Riding With the King is refreshingly ham-free, a commercially astute meeting of like mind, heart and voices. David Fricke