Date: Sunday, May 13, 2007
Section: Local
Edition: Final
Page: C6
By Evan Parker Pierce – CONTRIBUTING REVIEWER
B.B. King’s legend is immune to old age. In fact, getting old might be the greatest move of his career.
The heartache and soul of his blues are all the more relevant as time passes, and the 81-year-old King of the Blues shared a lifetime with the crowd Saturday in Seneca Niagara Events Center in Niagara Falls.
While age has robbed King of some movement — he played his entire set from center stage in a chair — it hasn’t taken anything away from his showmanship. Upon taking a seat after his introduction, King strapped on “Lucille,” his guitar, and strummed out his first licks of the evening, rocking back and forth and scrunching his face with the vivacity of someone a quarter his age. Classics like “You Know I Love You” and “How Blue Can You Get” inspired crowd reactions not only for their recognition, but because King clearly still feels what he’s singing. He yelped and emoted, using his entire body, with each song, either wincing or shaking his jowls with every lamentation. Even relatively recent songs like 1988’s “When Love Comes to Town” were sung with energy that outpaced a crowd with a mean age half of King’s. A breakdown in the middle of “When Love Comes” saw King dancing in his chair, hiking up his pant legs and shimmying the Harlem Shake better than most kids of the day.The sleepy audience didn’t faze King, however, and he pulled them into his set with stories, like a grandfather spinning tales and advice to his grandchildren. His stories weren’t fairy tales for tots, though: “I’ll tell all you young fellows, you 50-year-olds, a lesson. I’m 81 years old and I’ll tell ya: the older you get, the prettier they look.”
His stories weren’t all jokes, however. Much like his blues, they told of hard times few now experience, but were sweetened with his charm and humor. King told one story of growing up in Mississippi during time of segregation, when his small hometown was divided by railroad tracks into the white part of town and the black part of town, including the notorious separate “white” and “colored” water fountains.
“I snuck over to that part of town to taste the white water,” he said. “But the white water didn’t taste any different than our colored water.”
As his hour-and-a-half-long set drew to a close, King put into words the passion for living he demonstrated his entire show: “I’m just passing along a lesson,” he said, leading into, “I’m a Bluesman.” “Just know I’m glad to be alive,” he said.
