Just about the time this issue of bc hits the stands, BB King will celebrate his 83rd birthday. And perhaps not uncoincidentally, in One Kind Favor he’s just released one of the best albums of his almost 60-year professional career.

Stop and think about that for a moment. He’s old and his health isn’t what it used to be. He can’t need the money. And yet he’s still out there on the road, night after night, entertaining, simply because that’s what he loves doing. But against all odds, instead of just putting out his 917th greatest hits collection, he’s come up with something new and exciting.

You don’t see that kind of thing happening too often with rock or pop stars. No one expects the Rolling Stones to put out a decent album anymore and I don’t think any of us believes that Robbie Williams will still be touring when he’s 50, much less 80. Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen are still releasing valid new material, but they’re exceptions and not the rule. As for why it tends to happen more often with jazz (Duke, Miles), country (Willie) or other genres, that’s for minds with a lot more time to ponder than I have. I’ll just accept it as is and lap it up when it comes my way.

Anyway, One Kind Favor is produced by T-Bone Burnett, who has become one of the top go-to guys for aging stars looking to reinvent themselves (Robert Plant and John Mellencamp being two of the more recent examples); he’s kind of the American Brian Eno. The next thing you need to know is that the album was recorded live in the studio and that the backing band is Dr John on keyboards (and he’s consistently breathtaking throughout), Nathan East on bass and Jim Keltner smacking the drums, plus some occasional horns.

And the songs? They’re old – songs that BB might have played in his days as a disc jockey or when he was just starting out on what was called the chitlin’ circuit. Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker, Howlin’ Wolf, Big Bill Broonzy; See That My Grave is Kept Clean, Sitting on Top of the World, Blues Before Sunrise – healthy chunks of the essential blues canon (though oddly, there’s no Willie Dixon).

The first time I played the album, I was a bit put off by BB’s voice. On some of these songs, he sounds tired; he sounds 82 years old. Why couldn’t he have done this 20 years ago, I thought, when he was younger and his voice was stronger? But then I listened again, and again, and again. And I realized, yes, he does sound 82 years old, he’s bringing 82 years of living to these songs. He may not have written these songs, these may not be tunes that are associated with his long career, but on this album, he’s living inside these songs, he’s living through these songs, he owns them.

I’ve found that some people tend to undervalue BB’s contributions to blues music. That’s because his most popular records, from the ’60s and ’70s, were much smoother, much more ‘produced’ than other artists of that era. These people never heard his rawer ’50s recordings, have never seen him live in the right setting and don’t appreciate how influential his guitar style has been.

I’m lucky enough to have seen BB King in concert twice, in two very different settings. One time was in Las Vegas, when he did an hour of his hits – the poppier stuff like The Thrill is Gone, To Know You Is To Love You, Into the Night and When Love Comes to Town – giving the martini crowd what they paid for. But the other time, he was sharing a bill with Miles Davis. He knew he was in front of serious music fans and he wasn’t going to try to shine the audience. He worked, he sweated, he dug notes out of his guitar (Lucille, of course) that made you think he was right behind Robert Johnson at those crossroads. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that night that he was the real deal.

Speaking of Dr John, the 67-year-old Mac Rebennack has just released one of the best albums of his 40-plus-year career: The City That Care Forgot. As you might have guessed from the title, the man who personifies New Orleans is mighty pissed off about what happened to his birthplace in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This is not the first work of art that looks back at that disaster but without a doubt it’s the funkiest.

Dr John may not be known for protest songs, but here he meets the challenge head on. It’s as if the once self-proclaimed Night Tripper is performing an exorcism on the demons that have taken root in his soul since that horrible disaster. The 14 songs, five co-written with Louisiana legend Bobby Charles (Walking to New Orleans) don’t beat around the (ahem) Bush, their meaning isn’t obscured beneath layers of metaphor – he’s put it right out there, like it or lump it.

Promises, Promises is a jaunty little tune with lyrics like, “The road to the White House is paved with lies.” “Life is a near-death experience,” he sings on You Might Be Surprised. “Hell is right here on this great big earth.” He’s certainly not going to lie down and take it. On We Gettin’ There he sings, “And if you wonder how we do it? Short version – we gettin’ mad!” On Black Gold, he blames the oil industry for everything from pollution in the Gulf to the war in Iraq.

While there isn’t an apolitical song to be heard on this album, even Republicans (are there any left?) will enjoy the New Orleans funk whipped up with the help of his excellent backing band, The Lower 911, who seem equally at home playing funk, blues, gospel, rock
or even a bit of Dixieland jazz. Listen for prominent guest appearances from Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Terence Blanchard and Ani DiFranco.

If Willie Nelson isn’t the master of reinvention, he’s certainly the emperor of eclectic and his most recent album, Two Men With the Blues, finds him paired with Wynton Marsalis, tackling 10 standards ranging from Stardust and Georgia On My Mind to Caldonia. Nelson, as you would expect, sounds completely at ease fronting a band that includes members of his touring band and Marsalis’s current group. If pressed, I’d have to confess that I’m not the world’s biggest Wynton Marsalis fan. But on this album, for once, it sounds like someone pulled the stick out of Marsalis’s ass. On My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It, he sounds like, gasp, he’s having a good time!

In a summer dominated by Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl, the Jonas Brothers, Rhianna and Chris Brown and the soundtrack to Mamma Mia!, how curious that I’m finding fresh inspiration from the geriatric set. I’m positively elated that these guys are not content to just sit in their rocking chairs and count their royalty cheques. If nothing else, the fact that they’re still putting themselves out on the line and being more musically adventurous than the kids filling the pop charts gives me some glimmer of hope that my old age might be something more than sitting on a beach, boring people with stories of ‘the good old days’.