Blues
“B.B. King: The Montreux Years” is out on 20 November through BMG, with performances by the guitarist at the Montreux Jazz Festival recorded between 1982 and 2000. King played there twenty-three times across four decades, and the collection selects nine.
Of everything included, only one track had come out before. The first preview is “Early in the Mornin’”, from the 2000 concert. The original tapes have been restored and remastered by Tony Cousins at Metropolis Studios in London.
The double CD and the high-definition digital version include all nine performances; the double vinyl leaves one out, keeping eight. The release is made with the B.B. King estate and the festival’s team, under licence from Montreux Sounds, the archive left by Claude Nobs.
The announcement was made on 16 September, the day King would have turned 101.
Text by Enric Vilaplana