B.B. & Maya on a Groovy Blues Day

B.B. King - Get Myself Somebody

Although now viewed as the senior statesman of blues music, B.B. King spent the '60s at the top of his game as an R&B hitmaker, scoring hits with new recordings on ABC and its BluesWay imprint and with old recordings he had recorded for Kent years before (King had switched to ABC in 1961 but Kent would release B.B. King 45s and LPs through 1972, most notoriously in the case of the mid-'60s LP The Jungle, the cover art of which featured a shot of singer Johnny Adams - not to be confused with the "Tan Canary" of the same name - holding a guitar, but in rearview). Part of what kept King on the charts were groovy numbers like today's selection. "Get Myself Somebody," a BluesWay 45, features some unusual support in the songwriting department - the renowned poet Maya Angelou wrote the lyrics - and a fantastic arrangement. King doesn't do any guitar playing on this one; instead he lets the dancefloor groove push his gospelly reading of Maya's lyrics along while the horn charts set up nice turnarounds. From log rollers to ditch diggers, from beggars to presidents, everybody should dig this record if they got a little sense!