Review of B.B. King: Sweet Sixteen

Introduction

Sweet 16 contains footage of blues legend B.B. King’s concert in Zaire as part of the equally legendary Ali-Foreman fight in 1974. Containing some of the most popular songs from his huge catalogue of hits, including “The Thrill is Gone” and “Why I Sing the Blues”.

Video

Considering this concert footage was shot 30 years ago next year, it was a very pleasant surprise to see how good the DVD looked. Yes, the black level is far from solid and colours subdued, but still the picture quality was far above the level I expected. When I compared this to the fight footage of the boxing match itself on DVD, Sweet 16 came out favourably.

Audio

The soundtrack has been remastered into DD 5.1 and is again done very well, surpassing my expectations. B.B. vocals and guitar sound crisp throughout, and we can also hear enough of the audience to reproduce what must have been an electric evening of music.

Features

Music titles aren’t usually he most loaded DVD genre, although Sweet 16 has a couple of submenus that allow you to jump straight to your favourite song or solo.

Conclusion

Although I haven’t listened to much R‘n’B (Blues, before the term became strangely synonymous with urban hiphop) I did enjoy this disc very much as B.B. puts in a great performance by anyone’s standards and the DVD was much better than I thought it would be. Blues fans should be thrilled to have this in their collection; the only gripe is that it is a rather short gig at 48mins, so remember this when deciding how much to pay for it.