I've only had this CD for a week and it is already one of my favorites. When you think about it, it is amazing that B.B. King hasn't done a Christmas album before this. It was just meant to be. That big, warm, strong voice is the aural equivalent of a blazing fire. It was made for homey, comfortable Christmas songs. At the same time, even past seventy, he's got a sexy edge that makes a song like Clarence Carter's Back Door Santa at least as hot as the original. For me, the highlight is Merry Christmas Baby, a song that just about every blues or r&b singer of the past forty years has recorded (some of them brilliantly). This version would stand up to any of them, and wins my vote as the best ever, and, honestly, is among the toughest, hottest, most soul-drenched things I have ever heard B.B. King do. It there is such a thing as justice, this album is destined to become a classic.
