BB King & Eric Clapton - Riding With The King

Riding With the King won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album and reached number one on Billboard's Top Blues Albums. When it comes to the greatest rockin' bluesmen in history, at the top of the electrified traditional list is B. B. King: at the top of the contemporary list is Eric Clapton. Riding With the King brings the two living legends together for an entire album. When it comes to rockin' blues, Riding With the King is as great as it will ever get.

It sounds like the beginning of a story: "So, Slowhand and the King of the Blues were riding in a car ..." If this is a musical journey, it's the kind that rolls down long, empty stretches of country highway at 80 miles an hour, with the top down and the stereo blasting. Clapton and King may be more city than country, but this collection has the relaxed, laid-back feel that only comes from a pair of veterans doing what they do best.

What they do here is cover 12 classic blues songs, many of them staples of King's repertoire, so the title of this album makes sense. Whether it's the rollicking rock & roll of the title track, or the acoustic shuffle of "Key to the Highway," or the sweet notes of "When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer," a real sense of pleasure comes through on this album, the kind of pleasure one gets from jamming late at night with a good friend.

• 180 gram audiophile vinyl
• Double LP
• Cut from Original Master Recordings
• Cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Studios
• Pressed at Record Industry

1. Riding With the King
2. Ten Long Years
3. Key To the Highway

1. Marry You
2. Three O'Clock Blues
3. Help the Poor

1. I Wanna Be
2. Worried Life Blues
3. Days of Old

1. When My Heart Beats Like A Hammer
2. Hold On I'm Coming
3. Come Rain or Come Shine