First of a Few Unique Unforgettable Concerts

I’ve been to probably hundreds of concerts in my life, but there were several amazing ones each with some kind of a story I’d like to share with you.

Now a capital of Azerbaijan, an independent country, back in 1979 Baku was a capital of Az.S.S.R., the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, one of 15 republics of the former Soviet Union. Baku Boulevard, a fabulous city park, stretched along the Caspian Sea shore for many miles, with wide walkways lined up by benches in the shade of trees, bushes and flowerbeds. There were fountains, tennis and ping-pong courts, cafes, tea houses and restaurants, movie and children theaters and even a parachute tower and the Baku Boulevard’s own “Venice”, a net of canals with boat rides. Depending on the direction of the ever-present wind, the air could carry smell of salty water with a hint of oil from the Caspian Sea, the seasonal smell of greenery from the boulevard itself, or hot asphalt, motor exhaust and a whiff of dust from the city. Now the Baku Boulevard is even much larger, longer and more beautiful than before, but even back in the U.S.S.R. socialist times it was great and impressive.

If the weather was nice, and even if it was not, walking along the boulevard, one could bet on accidentally meeting someone familiar, a long unseen friend or far relative, equally surprised to meet.

With Victor, my school and college friend, and back then a colleague, working together at an offshore oil and gas field, we planned in advance to meet at the main entrance to the Boulevard in the early afternoon for a chat about Ph.D. dissertations we were working on in parallel. But just at the start of a friendly small talk, I saw Nick, a guy from Moscow, son of my father’s close friend, walking towards us with a wide smile and arms outstretched. As with any three men back in the U.S.S.R., soon enough an extremely un-original thought presented itself simultaneously in each of our heads, “Why wouldn’t we have a drink to celebrate our improbable meeting?” Victor voiced it out loud, “Guys, what about a shot of vodka?” We talked in our native Russian, however, when a suggestion was made, I joked in English, “As The Beatles and Led Zeppelin sang, ‘what can I do?'”

I know, I know, I need to explain the joke. “What can I do” sounds exactly like Russian “Водки найду”, or “I’ll find vodka.” This hidden meaning some Russian rock fans laughed about fit very well into the lyrics of those songs. Judge by yourself.

I was citing “Baby’s in Black” by The Beatles:

Oh dear, what can I do?
Baby’s in black and I’m feeling blue
Tell me, oh what can I do?

and “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” by Led Zeppelin:

(Hey, hey, what can I do?)
I said she won’t be true, naw
Yeah, no, yeah, no
(No, no, what can I say?)

Each song presented a reasonable situation to find some vodka. The guys chuckled, knowing me as an incurable Beatles fan, although Victor was more into jazz-rock and Nick was a huge early fan of Italian rock, a rising fad at the time.

Jokes aside, I said, “A bit too early for vodka, isn’t it? And I have plans for the evening.” Nick agreed, “Me, too, how about a beer?” Victor grudgingly agreed with the majority, so we decided on a beer. It was not easy to find decent beer in socialist times. Not the automatic beer dispensers, which we frequented while in college, where you put your mug under a nozzle, push a coin into a slot, only to hear a deep rumbling from inside, followed by a spit of some foam into your mug. You knock on the machine a few times, making it spill additional couple of ounces of beer, then put in another coin, which makes it suddenly wake up and produce two mugs in a row of warm watery drink remotely resembling beer. No, we’ve already graduated from students to respectable engineers, and wanted a nice place where beer would be served cold and tasty. In Baku, a city with population over a million, the capital of Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, there were only two beer pubs worth their while.

One more familiar to us was called “Truba”. I don’t remember its official name, but “truba” means a pipe in Russian, its vaulted ceilings indeed made you feel inside a pipe. “Truba” was located on the Karganov Street, a walking distance from the boulevard, maybe half an hour of a leisurely stroll. But having the evening plans, which Victor did as well, we remembered that another one, “Kahraba”, was on Zevin Street, just across the avenue from us, a few minutes walk, which would save us some time. “Kahraba” means amber in Azerbaijani language, an apt name for a beer place.

If you ask me what does it all have to do with B. B. King’s concert in Baku, I can understand your impatience, but get yourself a beer and bear with me. I promise, we’ll get there in the near future.

And the bright future just arrived. As we soon found out, our evening plans were exactly the same, we all had tickets for the concert of B. B. King in the V. I. Lenin Palace, a truly unique event. It was impossible to simply buy the tickets to that concert. It was a decade before Internet was invented, when you sit in front of your computer ready to click as soon as sales begin, and see the tickets disappear in 5 minutes. Without Internet you had to stand in a long all-night line, and see the tickets disappear 5 minutes before the sales were to start! Then in both cases you could go to scalpers or black market with exorbitant prices, but my wife Rena and I got a break as a gift from her father, my father-in-law, who was a veteran of WWII, and could miraculously get tickets as part of his veteran’s benefits.

The concert was the very first of its kind, the first ever true blues concert by a famous bluesman inside the Iron Curtain.

https://www.theleftchapter.com/post/b-b-king-in-the-ussr-1979

In fact, he was the biggest star, within few at the top of his genre to ever visit U.S.S.R. The only previous comparable tours were by Duke Ellington in 1971 (11 Grammy awards, 22 nominations, mostly in jazz), Cliff Richard in 1976 (called “British Elvis”, John Lennon reportedly said of Richard that before Cliff and The Shadows and their hit “Move It”, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music), Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in May, 1977 (3 Grammy awards, 9 nominations in country), Boney M in 1978 (one of the top disco bands, but they were lip-syncing to the vocals by their producer). All above only visited Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), but B.B.King (15 Grammy awards, 30 nominations in blues and R&B) played 22 concerts in 5 cities – Baku, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Moscow and Leningrad, from February 26 to March 24, 1979. Another top musician, Elton John (5 Grammy awards, 35 nominations, mostly in pop vocals) visited U.S.S.R. just a bit later, in May 1979.

https://arhsam.blogspot.com/2023/09/blog-post_9.html

As an avid Beatles fan, I have to point out, that B. B. King evokes several Beatles connections, direct and indirect, factual and in my own mind.

First of all, he’s one of very few musicians, mentioned by name in the Beatles songs, namely, in “Dig It.” Others are Bob Dylan, Doris Day and Elmore James (another blues musician). Moreover, in a print interview with Rolling Stone in 1971, John Lennon said: “One part of me says yes, of course, I can play because I can make a rock move, you know. But the other part of me says well, I wish I could just do like B. B. King. If you would put me with B. B. King, I would feel real silly.” To which B. B. King replied in another interview: “Well, I was watching TV one night, and the lead singer of the Beatles’ John Lennon said he wished he could play like B. B. King. I almost fell out of my chair. And that started me to thinking, ‘God, what am I doing? The greatest group on Earth, and the guy is saying that to me?’”

Secondly, while rock music and to a lesser extent blues was available in the U.S.S.R. on a black market as LP’s, shared between friends or bought as copies on magnetic tapes, the sheet music or books about blues and rock were practically non-existent or impossible to come by. Somehow, among the songs by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd or others I tended to like the ones which were most closely based on blues, without proper understanding what exactly is the blues, just by a deep feeling and emotion. This particular concert helped me understand why. It gave me an example of infinite improvisation within a firm yet flexible structure, more than a 1,000 books would be able to do.

And last but not least, Azerbaijan has a rich culture of improvisational music, called mugham. It has certain similarities with blues, such as being vocal-instrumental, having string instruments as most common among others, plus an important rhythm section, and having 7 main forms and 3 auxiliary ones. The number of blues varieties is different and subject to opinion, but there are 5 styles of blues and 3-4 major musical forms. A deep similarity is in improvisation within a fairly defined structure. Besides, both mugham and blues have lyrics about life, somewhat simple yet emotional and sometimes profound.

Even in Soviet times, Baku had a large jazz and rock fan community, a famous jazz musician, piano virtuoso Vagif Mustafazadeh injected some mugham improvisations into contemporary jazz. There were a lot of Beatles’ fans as well. A famous Azerbaijani singer Polad Bul Bul Ogly, who later became an ambassador of Azerbaijan to Russia, wrote and recorded a song “How We Loved The Beatles.”

My personal close friend, Vahid “Hippie” Mahmudov, was the biggest Beatles fan in Baku I knew, and, wait for it, he was a sound engineer for the B. B. King’s concert in Baku, and meeting the Blues Boy King backstage was a highlight of his career!

But back to the story. After having a beer with friends in “Kahraba”, I came back home, met my wife who came back home from school, where she was teaching math. It was Friday, and if you wonder why my wife worked while I was chatting with friends, it was one of 6 days onshore before the shift of 9 days in the Caspian Sea offshore, at the famous Oily Rocks causeway connected oilfield, so here you are. In pleasant anticipation, we headed to the concert. Entering the venue, we immediately felt that something was off. People were clustered in groups talking a bit tensely and even nervously, there were less smiles and laughs than one would expect at such a joyful occasion. We wondered if anything is wrong with the concert itself, was it cancelled or delayed, or what was going on? Soon we found out. There was a huge explosion with many casualties in the early afternoon inside a beer pub people called “Truba” on Karganov Street near Torgovaya Street. People from that area said the buildings shook, and blood was flowing along the street near the entrance. I realized it was not only possible, but fairly probable for me and my friends to have been there. We met with Victor and Nick in the lobby and embraced as if we were born again. In a way, B. B. King concert was a reason we decided to go to a closer beer pub. In a remote way, B. B. King might have saved our lives. Later it became known that the explosion was not an act of intentional crime or terrorism. A gas line leaked, and accumulated gas exploded resulting in that tragedy. Coincidentally, Nick’s relative, an executive of a gas supply company, was questioned about the accident, but thankfully cleared of any wrongdoing.

The blues music is intrinsically sad, as its name suggests. Even when it’s fast and joyful, it is against a deep rooted remorse or regret, attempt to deal with a negative feeling emphasized by the “blue” notes and ironic lyrics. But in its slow eight-bar form, it often raises to tragic heights.

This is why despite the terrible events of that day, the blues by B. B. King resonated with the shaken audience, and penetrated deep into our hearts.

Here’s the setlist (it is not from actual concert in Baku, but from the same tour in the U.S.S.R., taken from the videos below):

Orchestra Jam
INTRODUCTIONS
Orchestra
Caledonia
Downhearted
Why I Sing The Blues
Please Send Me Someone To Love
Never Make Your Move Too Soon
Hold On (I Feel Our Love Is Changing)
Jam
I Like to Live the Love
Hummingbird
Jam with Piano
Slow Blues Jam
I Just Can’t Leave Your Love Alone
The Thrill Is Gone

This is actually Part 1 of the concert:

And this is actually Part 2 of the concert:

As you can see, the stage was minimalistic to say the least. Only the band with the instruments and amps. And that was great, we saw musicians and listened to the music, that was enough for the pure magic. Even though there was a “conductor” of the band, himself a great musician, he and the band were always watching B. B. King to follow him, and B. B. King seemed to conduct the conductor and the band, with his slight turns, shoulder movement, turn of his head, or sometimes, seemingly just with a raised brow.

Here’s a press report at the time: