Search - B.B. King :: Midnight Believer/Take It Home

A terrific twofer CD that offers lots of great material

Dave | United States | 11/19/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Now here's a heck of a great reissue--a big thumbs up to the BGO label for releasing this terrific twofer. It combines B.B. King's 1978 album "Midnight Believer", & the follow up, 1979's "Take It Home", on 1 disc. "Midnight Believer" had been quite tough to find on CD prior to this release. Both of these two albums were basically flat-out collaborations with the Crusaders. Both of the albums were produced by Stewart Levine, who was the producer of previous Crusaders material, and Wilton Felder, Stix Hooper, & Joe Sample of the Crusaders. Also, apart from a couple King co-writes on "Take It Home", Crusaders members, along with their regular songwriting collaborator Will Jennings, were responsible for all of the songwriting. Also, Sample played all of the keyboards on both albums, Hooper played drums & percussion on the majority of tracks from each album, & Felder played bass on 2 "Midnight Believer" tracks & all of the "Take It Home" tracks. All that said, it's entirely logical to pair these 2 albums together--it's additionally nice since these individual albums both run less than 35 minutes apiece. There are some tracks on this CD that aren't up to snuff, but they are far outweighed by the highly worthwhile and excellent tracks which, when put together, make for a great CD. "Midnight Believer" offers irresistibly catchy & funky mid-tempo songs like the title track, "A World Full of Strangers", & the sly, infectiously fun "Never Make A Moon Too Soon". "I Just Can't Your Love Alone" is a tad overproduced, & has an excessive, overlong fade, but it's still really catchy. There's also a strong, moody ballad with "Hold On (I Feel Our Love Is Changing)", & a nice (though somewhat slight) feel-good tune with "When It All Comes Down (I'll Still Be Around)". The slow "Let Me Make You Cry A Little Longer" is frustratingly sappy, lacking in catchiness, & runs over 5 & ½ minutes, making it an exhausting tune to have closed the original album with, but it's the only dud on the album. "Take It Home" is overall a weaker album, but still has some great stuff. It offers some irresistible, funky tracks including "Happy Birthday Blues", the infectious feel-good tune "Better Not Look Down", which combines amusing spoken verses with an ultra catchy chorus, and "Tonight I'm Gonna Make You A Star", which was written by Jennings & King, and seems to be an ode to Lucille (his guitar). On the other hand, "The Beginning of the End", also written by Jennings & King, is a hard-hitting slow blues with an impassioned B.B. vocal. The funky "A Story Everybody Knows" is pretty great too, but the ends of the verses, with B.B. going into spoken word mode, are annoyingly corny. "Same Old Story (Same Old Song)" is ultra catchy, but runs itself into the ground a little with the excessive, overlong fade. The title track is a nice pop-ish feel-good tune, but it's frustratingly slight & sugary. "I've Always Been Lonely" is a rather dull ballad, & "Second-Hand Woman" is a bit grating & plodding--these 2 tracks aren't so bad that they'll compel you to instantly skip to the next track, but they fall way short of being fully satisfying. Still, the "Take It Home" album is never less than good background music. And like I said before, all of the really good/ excellent tracks from each album give you a heck of an album's worth of material. The sound quality on this disc is excellent & provides some nice liner notes as well, as well as full performance, songwriting, & production credits for each album. Even if it was the idea of someone at ABC Records (the label they were both on at the time) to bring B.B. King & The Crusaders together, it was a great idea nevertheless, & this CD offers conclusive proof that they made some excellent music together."