Singin' the Blues is the 1956 compilation album of blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 performer B.B. King on the Bihari brothers' Crown label. Among its tracks, the album gathered together five charting singles. "Bad Luck" was the highest charting single, reaching #3 on Billboard's

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

 "Black Singles

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States.The chart, initiated in 1942, is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, soul,...

" chart. Other charting singles include "Every Day I Have the Blues

Every Day I Have the Blues

"Every Day I Have the Blues" or "Everyday I Have the Blues" is a classic of the blues that has been recorded by numerous artists. The song is usually credited to Peter Chatman and is often associated with jazz singer Joe Williams and B.B. King...

" (#8), "Ten Long Years" (#9), "Crying Won't Help You" (#15) and "Sweet Little Angel" (#6). The album was originally released on the Crown subsidiary of Modern Records

Modern Records

Modern Records was an American record label formed in 1945 in Los Angeles by the Bihari brothers. In the 1960s, Modern Records went bankrupt and ceased operations, but the catalogue went with the management into what became Kent Records. This back catalogue was eventually licensed to the UK label...

 and has been reissued several times, as part of a two-album combined CD alongside King's second release The Blues and with bonus tracks by Japanese

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 label P-Vine Records

P-Vine Records

P-Vine Records is a record label started by Blues Interactions, Inc., a firm in Tokyo, Japan established in 1975 by Yasufumi Higurashi and Akira Kochi...

 and U.K. label Ace Records (UK)

Ace Records (UK)

Ace Records Ltd. was started in 1978. Initially the company only gained permission from the label based in Mississippi to use the name in the UK, but eventually also acquired the rights to publish their recordings. When Chiswick's pop side was licensed to EMI in 1984, Ace switched to more licensing...

. On "Please Love Me", King combines T-Bone Walker

T-Bone Walker

Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker was a critically acclaimed American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who was one of the most influential pioneers and innovators of the jump blues and electric blues sound. He is the first musician recorded playing blues with the...

's hard-picking, distorted guitar style with his own mournful singing.

Side one

1. "Please Love Me" – 2:51
2. "You Upset Me Baby" – 3:04
3. "Every Day I Have the Blues
   Every Day I Have the Blues
   "Every Day I Have the Blues" or "Everyday I Have the Blues" is a classic of the blues that has been recorded by numerous artists. The song is usually credited to Peter Chatman and is often associated with jazz singer Joe Williams and B.B. King...
   
   " (Memphis Slim
   Memphis Slim
   Memphis Slim was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues", has become a blues standard, recorded by many other...
   
   ) – 2:49
4. "Bad Luck" (Ivory Joe Hunter
   Ivory Joe Hunter
   Ivory Joe Hunter was an American rhythm and blues singer, songwriter, and pianist. After a series of hits on the US R&B chart starting in the mid 1940s, he became more widely known for his hit recording, "Since I Met You Baby" . He was billed as The Baron of the Boogie, and also known as The...
   
   ) – 2:54
5. "3 O'Clock Blues" (Lowell Fulson
   Lowell Fulson
   Lowell Fulson was a big-voiced blues guitarist and songwriter, in the West Coast blues tradition. Fulson was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He also recorded for business reasons as Lowell Fullsom and Lowell Fulsom...
   
   ) – 3:03
6. "Blind Love" – 3:06

Side two

1. "Woke Up This Morning" – 2:59
2. "You Know I Love You" – 3:06
3. "Sweet Little Angel" (Lucille Bogan
   Lucille Bogan
   Lucille Bogan was an American blues singer, among the first to be recorded. She also recorded under the pseudonym Bessie Jackson...
   
   , ? Smith) – 3:00
4. "Ten Long Years" – 2:49
5. "Did You Ever Love a Woman" (Dwight Moore) – 2:34
6. "Crying Won't Help You" (Hudson Whittaker
   Tampa Red
   Tampa Red , born Hudson Woodbridge but known from childhood as Hudson Whittaker, was an American Chicago blues musician....
   
   ) – 3:00

CD re-release bonus tracks

Bonus tracks on both the re-releases by P-Vine and Ace. Except where otherwise noted, all songs by King and Taub.

1. "Whole Lotta Meat" (King) – 2:32
2. "I'm Cracking Up Over You" – 3:23
3. "I Stay in the Mood" (Joe Josea, King) – 2:55
4. "When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer 'Million Years Blues'" (John Williamson) – 2:58
5. "Jump with You Baby" – 2:14
6. "Lonely and Blue" (John Costa Jr., John Erby) – 2:58
7. "Dark is the Night, Pt. 'the Blues Has Got Me'" (Maxwell Davis
   Maxwell Davis
   Maxwell Davis was an American R&B saxophonist, arranger and record producer.-Biography:Davis was born in Independence, Kansas. In 1937 he moved to Los Angeles, California, playing saxophone in the Fletcher Henderson orchestra...
   
   , King, Taub) – 2:41
8. "Ruby Lee" – 3:01

Performance

• Red Callender
  Red Callender
  Red Callender, , was a jazz bass and tuba player, famous for turning down a chance to work with Duke Ellington's Orchestra and the Louis Armstrong All-Stars....
  
   – bass
  Double bass
  The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
  
  
• Maxwell Davis
  Maxwell Davis
  Maxwell Davis was an American R&B saxophonist, arranger and record producer.-Biography:Davis was born in Independence, Kansas. In 1937 he moved to Los Angeles, California, playing saxophone in the Fletcher Henderson orchestra...
  
   – sax (tenor)
  Tenor saxophone
  The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...
  
  
• Jewell L. Grant – sax (alto)
  Alto saxophone
  The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in 1841. It is smaller than the tenor but larger than the soprano, and is the type most used in classical compositions...
  
  
• Billy Hadnot – bass
• Ralph Hamilton – bass
• Lorenzo Holden – sax (tenor)
• B. B. King
  B. B. King
  Riley B. King , known by the stage name B.B. King, is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter.Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at No.3 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. According to Edward M...
  
   – guitar
  Guitar
  The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
  
  , vocals
  Singing
  Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
  
  
• Willard McDaniel – piano
  Piano
  The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
  
  
• Jack McVea
  Jack McVea
  Jack McVea was an American swing, blues, and rhythm and blues woodwind player; he played clarinet and tenor and baritone saxophone...
  
   – sax (tenor)
• Bumps Myers – sax (tenor)
• Jake "Vernon" Porter – trumpet
  Trumpet
  The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
  
  
• Jesse Price – drums
  Drum kit
  A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
  
  
• Jesse Sailes – drums
• Maurice Simon
  Maurice Simon
  Maurice James Simon is a jazz saxophonist.A high school classmate of Eric Dolphy Simon appears on an early 1945 Los Angeles recording in a band led by Russell "Illinois" Jacquet and which also included Teddy Edwards, Charles Mingus, Bill Davis and Chico Hamilton.In 1948, again with Jacquet as...
  
   – sax (tenor)
• Floyd Turnham – sax (alto), sax (baritone)
  Baritone saxophone
  The baritone saxophone, often called "bari sax" , is one of the largest and lowest pitched members of the saxophone family. It was invented by Adolphe Sax. The baritone is distinguished from smaller sizes of saxophone by the extra loop near its mouthpiece...
  
  
• Charles Waller – sax (tenor)

Production

• Roger Armstrong – tape archivist
• Jon Broven – compilation, annotation
• Brian Burrows – package design
• Duncan Cowell – mastering
  Audio mastering
  Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...
  
  , mixing
  Audio mixing (recorded music)
  In audio recording, audio mixing is the process by which multiple recorded sounds are combined into one or more channels, most commonly two-channel stereo. In the process, the source signals' level, frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are manipulated and effects such as reverb may...
  
  , restoration
• Cy Schneider – liner notes
  Liner notes
  Liner notes are the writings found in booklets which come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for vinyl records and cassettes.-Origin:...