B. B. King Emphasizes Classic Blues Songs

B. B. King posed the question of the night Saturday when he sang one of his signature songs: “How Blue Can You Get?”

In the first of two New Year’s Eve sets at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim, King and Bobby (Blue) Bland both provided the traditional response in solid, sometimes eloquent sets well-stocked with classics of the genre.

For Millie Jackson, the bill’s third attraction, being blue has more to do with the profanely outrageous comic tradition of Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor.

How blue can she get? Well, by the end of her 55 minutes on stage, there was no question about which Jackson is really Bad. But Jackson (no relation to Michael) wound up overdoing the saucy stuff. It would have been better to hear more of her gritty funk singing and ardor-filled soul balladry, and less of her salty rapping about male shortcomings and female survival tactics.

If brashness is Jackson’s hallmark, Bland’s is restraint. It served him well in a 40-minute performance in which his singing was often stirring enough to elicit testifying cries from the audience. Bland consistently brought emotions into clear focus--whether pleading for romance on a soul-flavored ballad, or suffering existential slings and arrows on “Stormy Monday.”

King made it a happy new year for anyone who loves to hear him play guitar, spicing his 90-minute set with lots of sharp soloing. Highlights included “You Know I Love You,” rendered as a lovely, lyrical guitar ballad, and a playfully rocking performance of “Why I Sing the Blues.”

King stuck to older material rather than play anything from his new album, “King of the Blues: 1989,” and that was just as well. In a crowd-pleasing ending, he sang “The Thrill Is Gone,” the 1970 hit that brought him to the attention of the mainstream rock audience, then swung into a funky reading of “When Love Comes to Town,” a number from U2’s “Rattle and Hum” album that features King in a vibrant guest shot with the Irish rock band.