Blow Hard
The tragic tale of I Never Loved A Man’s sax icon, KING CURTIS.
IT’S THERE in the way his sax snuggles up beside her or in his tone as he comments on her vocal in Soul Serenade – few musicians established such a close musical bond with Aretha than King Curtis, the Texan tenorist who featured on the New York recorded tracks of I Never Loved A Man…, and who would work regularly with her, become her musical director with his band The Kingpins, and was a mainstay of her band at the three extraordinary nights of performances on March 5, 6 and 7, 1971, that formed the source of her Live At Fillmore West, released in May 1971, and, indeed, his own LP of the same title which followed in August. Curtis had worked on half-a-dozen of Aretha’s first Atlantic albums – a bluesy masterpiece during Going Down Slow on Aretha Arrives, for example – but perhaps none surpassed the sponteniety and fizz of the Fillmore West performances as heard on Don’t Fight The Feeling, Rhino’s 4CD set of the complete three nights, which also feature Curtis’s sets in their entirety. Born Curtis Montgomery in Forth Worth on February 2, 1934, he was adopted by the Ousley family and was just six when he heard Louis Jordan on the radio, piquing his interest in the sax. By the age of 11 he was playing alto, as King Curtis. When his school acquired a tenor, he volunteered to learn it. When they got a baritone he stepped up again. As befits a child of Texas, he developed a hard, honking, deep-toned sound, but was a fan of Lester Young, too, and so alongside the bite of Earl Bostic and Gene Ammons, there was a sensitivity and variety to his ensemble and solo work, fed by the gospel of his childhood, and the blues and jazz heard on the radio. In the early ’50s he moved to New York, playing live dates with the likes of Lionel Hampton and Horace Silver, and building a reputation as an inspired session player as he moved into R&B and rock’n’roll. He worked at Atlantic in two spells. First as a go-to sessionman most memorably with The Coasters – Yakety Yak, Charlie Brown and Along Came Jones all have exuberant sax motifs. Post-Atlantic he had his first hit (Soul Twist, a 1962 R&B Number 1 for Enjoy), played with Sam Cooke, signed to Capitol, then Prestige subsidiary Tru Sound for jazz sides with Nat Adderley and Wynton Kelly, and a vocal blues album Trouble In Mind. But in 1965 returned to Atlantic and recorded his best-know solo hits like his co-write with Luther Dixon, Soul Serenade, which Aretha would vocalise on I Never Loved A Man…, and his own song, Memphis Soul Stew. Tragically, on August 13, days after his career-peak Live At Fillmore West was released, while carrying an air conditioner up to his New York apartment on West 86th Street he got into an argument with a drug dealer who was blocking the steps into the building and was stabbed to death. Geoff Brown