I had this clever (well, okay: lame) idea to devote this Mid-Week Music Break to a playlist about gratitude of one kind or another, for one experience or another. But after riffling through the stacks (so to speak) for a good long while, wow, I was not coming up with a lot of winners.

Well, not unless you count hymns which (if we are to believe hundreds of old elementary- and Sunday-school music performances) were sung by 17th-century Massachusetts Pilgrims as they hastened and chastened to the Thanksgiving table… even though the hymns weren’t written for another two hundred-plus years.

Then I landed on a number by B.B. King, called “Thank You for Loving the Blues.” It’s not bad in its own right — a mix of talking voiceover and King’s characteristic, spectacularly flourishing guitar. (As I understand it, King wrote the poem he’s reciting.) But what really called to me was another piece from the same 1973 album — this one, the funky, epic eight-minute title track.

“To Know You Is to Love You” was written by Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright for the latter’s debut album, Syreeta. When B.B. King went to Philadelphia to record with with the band known as MFSB — who’d backed up the O’Jays, the Stylistics, Billy Paul, and other vocalists associated with the so-called “Philly Sound” — Stevie Wonder joined him and sat in at the keyboard. In an appreciation written a few years later, Rolling Stone writer Bob Palmer said:

The title tune alone is worth the price of admission. Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright composed it. Stevie plays electric piano, B.B. turns in a powerful vocal performance that is ably supported by his crackling guitar, and the incomparable Sigma Sound [Studios] rhythm section—the musicians who back Billy Paul, the O’Jays, the Intruders, and the Stylistics—contributes a hefty punch.

“Hefty punch” — I’ll say, especially in the horns. (Depending on whether you expect them or not, their sound may either get you up dancing or knock you back on your heels.) But then Palmer added:

The tempo and the minor mode have a superficial resemblance to “The Thrill Is Gone” [a King signature number, also on the album], but structurally “To Know You Is to Love You” isn’t a blues.

I don’t know enough about music to understand what “structurally” means in that context. But I do know that this powerful number both solidly resembles and radically departs from B.B. King’s sound as I’d come to expect. The instrumental breaks are above all pure (whether they’re powered by King’s guitar or by the horns), and I’ve got to say that both the rhythm on the chorus and the lyrics — at least as King interprets them — leave little doubt what the singer means by “knowing” the object of his affection. (Biblical, indeed. And yes, there was probably some gratitude in the relationship… eventually, once things calmed down a little.)

[Below, click Play button to begin To Know You Is to Love You. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 8:35 long.]

[Lyrics]

(For an excellent review of both the album as a whole and this particular song, check this post over at Derek Anderson’s blog — “the music blog where music matters.”)