In a world where Red Bull-injected athletes have hijacked blues guitar, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram is a welcome return to feel, nuance, style, communication, and imagination.

Drawing from the most-outstanding performers of the African-American music tradition, Kingfish adds his unique guitar sauce to the recipe and truly gets down on his latest project.

Recorded on June 6, 2023, Live In London is a two-CD set that includes encore performances and bonus tracks, including the previously unrecorded “Midnight Heat.” With a killer band that excels in joining soul, gospel, and the blues, Kingfish paces his set like a man wooing a beautiful woman. “She Calls Me Kingfish” and “Fresh Out” begin the set and continues with a sonic arsenal of soulful moods, chops, and the aromatic flavor of George Benson, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Gales. He incinerates on “Empty Promises” and “Hard Times,” and his acoustic set is sublime.

While his blues-rock contemporaries rely on muscular pentatonic workouts to mask subpar singing, blues is an oral tradition. Kingfish not only plays guitar like a demon, he sings his ass off, too. And what he does onstage is beautifully captured here. It’s how the blues is supposed to be done.

This article originally appeared in VG’s January 2024 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.