One major event that has illustrated the diversity of the modern blues circuit is the Chicago Blues Festival, which takes place annually in the Windy City's Grant Park but is often full of bluesmen who aren't particularly Chicago-sounding. Of course, the event's coordinators never claimed that any artist who got booked was obligated to sound like Buddy Guy, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, or Muddy Waters. But even so, the fact that so many different types of non-Chicago-sounding blues artists take the stage annually in Grant Park shows how large the blues umbrella is. And similarly, singer/guitarist Guy King's solo album Livin' It is a perfect demonstration of the fact that playing electric blues and having a Windy City address doesn't automatically mean that one is going to display a Chess Records/Willie Dixon aesthetic. In Chicago, King is known for the six years he spent playing guitar in the late Willie Kent's band, but this 2008 recording isn't nearly as Kent-minded as some might expect; instead, the disc's more obvious influences range from Jimmy Witherspoon to T-Bone Walker to Robben Ford to Percy Mayfield. This 55-minute CD has one foot in blues-jazz and the other in blues-soul, and King favors a relaxed vocal style that is somewhere between Ford and Mose Allison. King's writing is solid on five original tunes, although just over half of the selections are non-originals -- and only a few of those non-originals have a strong Chicago connection. Big Maceo Merriweather's "Worried Life Blues," for example, is a standard that originated during the pre-Chess era of Chicago blues. But King also turns his attention to Walker's "I Got a Break," Mayfield's "Stranger in My Own Home Town," and Little Johnny Taylor's "If You Love Me Like You Say," all of which will come as a surprise to anyone who expects King's solo output to be a stylistic continuation of his work with Kent. Livin' It is a promising demonstration of what King has to offer as a solo artist.
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