FREDDIE KING

The Texas Cannonball – the meanest picker in town!

Of the legendary ‘Three Kings’, Freddie was the youngest and most raucous. His guitar style was fast and ferocious, with huge string bends and vicious vibrato, his vocals almost guttural in their delivery.

Born in Gilmer, Texas in 1934, Freddie learned guitar from age six, but moved to Chicago while in his teens. Freddie would sneak into the blues clubs and watch legends like Muddy Waters, Elmore James and T-bone Walker. He took onboard their stagecraft, marvelled at their musicianship and determined to make it big, just like them. But after continual rejection by Chess Records on Chicago’s South Side he finally struck a deal with Federal Records on the city’s West Side, where a hipper blues scene was burgeoning. Freddie became a hit in the clubs here, and his first single for Federal would become a standard – Have You ever loved a woman, later a staple in Eric Clapton’s career.

Freddie influenced a raft of later white guitarists, like Clapton, Peter Green, Michael Bloomfield and Stevie Ray Vaughan. His instrumentals became legendary – Hideaway, Thestumble and San-ho-zay, among others – and he will also be remembered for having one of the first mixed race bands. Freddie was hard working and hard living, and died of pancreatitis, aged just 42.

ALBERT KING

The Velvet Bulldozer, a literal giant of the blues

Born Albert Nelson in 1923, Albert King stood 6’ 4” and weighed 250lbs. Like BB (no relation, although Albert often fudged the reality), was born on and worked on a cotton plantation in Indianola, Texas.

King fashioned his first guitar from a cigar box, with a tree branch neck and strung it with a strand of broom wire. When he finally got a guitar, being left-handed he simply turned the right-hander upside down and played with the strings reversed. He also tuned very loosely – Gary Moore told Guitarist magazine that while working with King he took a sneaky peak and found it to be C# F# B E G# C#.

This down-stringing made his action very pliable. Albert could play a whole lick by bending his top string by a 4th and letting it down to create other intervals.

After various attempts at a record deal he moved to Memphis and was signed by soul label Stax, with superb house band Booker T & The MG’S. The MG’S backed King on his legendary 1967 album Bornunderabadsign which contained the brilliant Crosscutsaw, Thehunter (covered by Free), Ohpretty Woman (covered by Gary Moore) and the title track (covered by Cream).

Nicknamed The Velvet Bulldozer due to his huge size but sweet singing voice, Albert played simply but beautifully on his 1958 Gibson Flying V. You can hear huge slabs of him in the playing of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Joe Walsh among others.