Rusty Dusty Blues (Mama Mama Blues)

Originally a hit for Count Basie with Louis Jordan on vocals, B.B. King tackles this swing-era standard and makes it a guitar record. King loved the big band jazz of the 1930s, and his entire musical goal was to make his guitar sound like a horn section. Here, he takes a classic big band arrangement and replaces the horn solos with his signature stinging vibrato and precise, single-note phrasing. It shows exactly how King synthesized the elegance of jazz with the raw emotion of the Delta.