I have to officially put my hand up and admit it, but I never actually listened to a B.B. King song while he was still alive.

Some of you are disgusted. A lot of you are probably in the same boat.

But it just wasn’t in my wheel house, what with the indie rocks and the hip hop and what not, the King of Blues’ guitar Lucille never got the chance to gently weep in my ignorant ears.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was writing a story about the late, great blues legend’s death for another publication when I stumbled across this song.

It’s a cover of the Willie Nelson classic ‘Night Life’ that King performed on the famed Austin City Limits TV show in 1982 (it aired in 1983). I listened to it once for the story. Then I listened to it again. Then another 38 times after that. It’s God damn magical.

This song gives me the kind of feelings I get when I hear Randy Newman’s Toy Story theme ‘You’ve Got A Friend In Me.’ It flicks some kind of joy switch that used to flicker regularly when I was a child and rarely gets touched as an adult. Something within my soul begins smiling from ear to ear and a sensation of ecstasy tingles its way from my hair to my fingertips.

King’s guitar playing is so passionate and electrifying, his voice so soulful – but not in the overused “soulful” way that I use to describe way too much shit because I can’t think of a better adjective for it – this is real soul climbing out of his mouth and wafting into the microphone as he holds and rings everything he can out of the word “li-i-i-i-i-i-i-fe.”

And then that trumpet player – looking like Jules Winfield from Pulp Fiction‘s daddy – steps up to the mic and just destroys. The bit where he takes off that muffler thing and the horn is allowed to shriek into full might – holy shit! It kills me.

Not to be outdone the King then comes back in and unloads a guitar solo so gorgeous it makes me feel like I’ve never heard a guitar before in my entire life.

I don’t know if you’ll like the song quite as much as I do, but to be honest I don’t care. I’m going to go listen to it another 20 times again. I’ve got a lot of a B.B. King listening to make up for.