More B.B. King
More Electric Blues
- You’ll find outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this vintage ABC pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
- Clean, clear and dynamic with tons of space and transparency, this is the way to hear B.B. and this big group of master musicians
- Ringo, Peter Green, Klaus Voorman, Steve Winwood, Alexis Korner, Gary Wright and Dr. John are just a few of the artists featured on this record behind B.B. — quite a cast of luminaries
- “…this encounter with Brit second-liners (famed blues devotee Ringo Starr is the big catch) and L.A. session stars is substantial stuff. ‘Caldonia’ and ‘Ain’t Nobody Home’ are more than that.” – Robert Christgau
- If you’re a fan of the man, this classic from 1971belongs in your collection.
This vintage ABC pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for —this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What The Best Sides Of In London Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you havealmostnothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in1971
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now.Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above,and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
A Big Group of Musicians Needs This Kind of Space
One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.
Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re justbiggerandclearer.
And most of the time those very special pressings are just plainmore involving. When you hear a copy that does all that — a copy like this one — it’s an entirely different listening experience.
What We’re Listening For On In London
- Energyfor starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then:presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- The Big Soundcomes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Thentransient information— fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass— which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next:transparency— the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottomandvoila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
Vinyl Condition
Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)
Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don’t have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.
If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that’s certainly your prerogative, but we can’t imagine losing what’s good about this music — the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight — just to hear it with less background noise.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Caldonia
Blue Shadows
Alexis’ Boogie
We Can’t Agree
Side Two
Ghetto Woman
Wet Hayshark
Part-Time Love
Power Of The Blues
Ain’t Nobody Home
Rateyourmusic.com Rave Review
This is indeed a great London set with a plethora of some of the best British musicians of the time but what strikes me the most is the quality of the material throughout.
We also get to hear BB King on a rare acoustic guitar on the beautiful “Alexis’ boogie” featuring Mr. Korner on 2nd acoustic guitar. All tracks are really well played and Gary Wright’s piano riff on “Wet Hayshark” is infectious.
Jim Price played and arranged the horn section wonderfully but really, it’s hard to find a subpar track or anything even remotely poorly executed as all 9 tracks are top notch fusion between US Legend and awe inspired younger British bluesmen. A must have!
–artaudbvandersmith
