B.B. King Sings “Sweet Little Angel” Live

The first known recording of “Sweet Little Angel” was by Lucille Bogan in 1930. It was a twelve-bar blues with just a piano for accompaniment. B.B. King made his own cover of the song in 1956. As written in the “Blues Boy: The Life and Music of B.B. King” written by Sebastian Danchin, King said: “I got the idea for ‘Sweet Little Angel’ from Robert Nighthawk’s ‘Sweet Black Angel’, though I later discovered that the song had been recorded by someone before Nighthawk. At the time ‘black’ was not a popular word, as it is now. Instead of using the old title, I changed it to ‘Sweet Little Angel’—and that was a pretty big record for me.”

It was such a huge hit that it dominated the Billboard charts.