Eric Clapton & B.B. King - Riding With The King

Riding With The King is a collaborative studio album by blues musicians Eric Clapton and B.B. King, originally released in June 2000 via Duck and Reprise Records.

Riding With The King was the first collaborative album by Eric Clapton and B.B. King.  At the time of recording the album, Clapton was 55 and King 74.

Clapton initiated the recording sessions for Riding with the King and included some of his regular session musicians on the album. He also chose the songs and co-produced the album with Simon Climie, who had previously worked on several of Clapton's albums.

Clapton gave centre-stage to King, who took the lead on many of the songs with his singing and his solos.

The album contains five "vintage" King songs from the 1950s and 1960s: "Ten Long Years", "Three O'Clock Blues", "Help the Poor", "Days of Old" and "When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer".

Other standards include the Big Bill Broonzy-penned "Key to the Highway", Chicago pianist Maceo Merriweather's "Worried Life Blues", a cover of Isaac Hayes's composition "Hold On, I'm Comin'" originally a 1966 single for Sam & Dave, and "Come Rain or Come Shine" from the 1946 musical St. Louis Woman.

The album's title track, "Riding With The King", is a John Hiatt composition that came about when producer Scott Mathews recounted to Hiatt a strange and abstract dream he had of flying on an airplane with Elvis Presley.  The balance of the tracks were written especially for the album.

Riding With The King won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album. The album reached #3 on the US Billboard 200 and #1 on Billboard's Top Blues Albums Charts and was certified 2× Multi-Platinum in the United States.

This double album 2LP record set is a 2026 reissue on 180 gram gold coloured vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve with two bonus tracks and remastered audio, pressed the US via Bushbranch and Surfdog Records.