| Love Me Tender | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | B.B. King |
| Cover: | Love Me Tender (B.B. King album).webp |
| Released: | 1982 |
| Studio: | Music City Music Hall (Nashville, Tennessee) |
| Genre: | Blues |
| Label: | MCA |
| Producer: | Stewart Levine |
| Prev Title: | There Must Be a Better World Somewhere |
| Prev Year: | 1981 |
| Next Title: | Blues 'N' Jazz |
| Next Year: | 1983 |
Love Me Tender is a studio album by the American blues musician B.B. King.[1] [2] It was released via MCA Records in 1982.[3] King supported the album by appearing on Austin City Limits.[4]
The album peaked at No. 179 on the Billboard 200.[5]
Produced by Stewart Levine, the album was recorded in Nashville.[6] The Muscle Shoals Horns appear on some tracks. "Love Me Tender" is a cover of the song made famous by Elvis Presley; King was Presley's favorite blues musician.[7]
The New York Times panned the first side of Love Me Tender, calling it "bland, countrypolitan elevator music," but thought more highly of side two's "first-rate after-hours blues."[8] The Globe and Mail wrote that "the singing is lugubrious, the playing is by rote, and the sound is so lush that King can barely be heard above it."[9]
AllMusic called the album an "extremely ill-advised foray into mushy Nashville cornpone." The Rolling Stone Album Guide considered it a return to the "gentle sound" of Midnight Believer.