Freddie King - Blues Journey
“I don’t care what language you speak,” blues guitar powerhouse Freddie King would announce from the stage, usually midway through a devastating number. “Everybody understands the blues!”
That was especially true when King was doing the regal speaking.
A new phase of his career commenced as the 1970s dawned. It rendered Freddie a blues star on a far loftier level than before, even if he had scored a series of 1961 R&B hits for Syd Nathan’s Cincinnati-based Federal Records that in retrospect went a long way towards defining the Gilmer, Texas native’s eternal electric blues legacy.
The catalyst was Leon Russell, who took over as King’s producer when he brought Freddie aboard his Shelter label in 1970. The keyboardist aimed Freddie’s releases primarily at the burgeoning blues-rock demographic that was steadily growing hipper to the massively constructed guitarist, rather than the longtime denizens of the chitlin’ circuit that had kept Freddie eating throughout the previous decade. King’s sound changed some in the process, and so did his choice of material. Instead of tracking down fresh songs, borrowing obscure ones, or writing his own as he had for Federal, Freddie tended to gravitate towards time-honored blues standards at Shelter, a practice he’d first instituted on his previous pair of albums for Cotillion. The hip instrumentals that had given him some of his biggest sellers fell by the wayside too.
To promote his new Shelter product, Freddie assembled a tough road band that could keep pace with his extraordinarily high-energy attack and shifted his set lists accordingly, touring far and wide all over the globe until his tragic death in December of 1976 at age 42. This collection offers a generous cross-section of King’s ‘70s live performances, inevitably bristling with aggressive energy and serving notice that Freddie took no prisoners every time he mounted a stage and let fly with a barrage of furious guitar pyrotechnics.
King’s torrid sound was the product of his unique upbringing. Born September 3, 1934 in Gilmer, Texas, young Freddie was exposed to plenty of music early in his life. His mother, Ella May King, and her brother Leon King both played guitar, the latter showing him some licks when Freddie was just six years old before Leon’s tragic death in an auto accident. The lad embraced the music of jump blues pioneer Louis Jordan as he grew up, along with that of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Lightnin’ Hopkins, learning from their records in every case.
But here’s where his narrative grows singular: in December of 1950, 16-year-old Freddie and his family migrated to the West Side of Chicago, where King’s massive frame soon allowed him entrée into local blues joints despite his tender age. He found himself three important mentors on guitar: Eddie Taylor (Jimmy Reed’s solidifying musical partner), the brilliant Robert Jr. Lockwood, and Jimmy Rogers, who played rhythm guitar in Muddy’s peerless ensemble. Freddie adopted Jimmy’s two-fingered style, donning picks on his thumb and index finger.
Freddie’s early musical associates included guitarist Sunnyland Charles, drummer Frank Scott, harpist Sonny Cooper, and guitarist Jimmie Lee Robinson. He and Robinson formed the Every Hour Blues Boys to gig at hole-in-the-wall West Side joints. By 1956, King was ready to debut on wax as a leader. While playing with harpist Earlee Payton’s Blues Cats, he waxed a 1956 single for John Burton’s El-Bee label. “That’s What You Think” was a roaring shuffle where King sounded very confident vocally (there was very little sign of his axe, however).
It would be another four years before Freddie would receive another chance to record as a leader. Pianist Sonny Thompson, a veteran A&R man at Federal Records (although the label and its King parent imprint were located in Cincinnati, Sonny headed its Chicago offices), liked what he heard when King gigged at Mel’s Hideaway Lounge and other West Side blues bars and pacted him to Federal in 1960. King embarked to Cincy that August for a unbelievably prolific marathon session that produced several landmark hits.
“You’ve Got To Love Her With A Feeling,” King’s first Federal release, was an easy-going remake of a Tampa Red chestnut that made an unlikely appearance on the pop charts (its flip, the luxurious Billy Myles-penned slow blues “Have You Ever Loved A Woman,” didn’t hit along with it but became a blues standard anyway). Then Federal unleashed King’s signature instrumental “Hide Away,” done at the same bountiful session, as his encore. Freddie had his first legitimate R&B smash.
Named after Mel’s Hideaway Lounge, one of King’s main West Side haunts, “Hide Away” was a pastiche of stitched together parts, all seamlessly connected; slide guitarist Hound Dog Taylor had invented the main melody, but there were swatches of Jimmy McCracklin’s “The Walk” and Henry Mancini’s theme from the TV detective show Peter Gunn in there too, and a wide-open break chord that originated with the inventive Lockwood.
Dropping another of Myles’ downbeat blues, “I Love The Woman,” on the B-side, Federal pressed the single up and watched it zoom right into the R&B Top Five and the Top 30 on the pop side. Freddie’s instrumentals even appealed to the Southern California surfing crowd, so much that King Records later renamed his first all-instrumental LP Freddy King Goes Surfin’ to cash in on the craze.
. No doubt about it: 1961 was Freddy’s year. He scored no less than seven hits in all, his streak continuing with the swinging vocal “Lonesome Whistle Blues;” a two-sided hit pairing the slashing West Side-styled instrumental “San-Ho-Zay” and a jumping vocal outing, “See See Baby;” the tough upbeat vocal “I’m Tore Down,” and at year’s end the Yuletide heartbreaker “Christmas Tears.” All of a sudden, B.B. wasn’t the only King to take the blues world by storm (Albert was just beginning to emerge as a hitmaker as well).
With all those hits in his back pocket, King did a fair amount of touring on the R&B theater circuit out East and played local clubs nearly every night when he was back home for a spell. He established himself everywhere he went as a truly ferocious blues guitarist and vocalist. Freddie recruited his younger brother, Benny Turner, as his sometime bassist; Benny would later settle into King’s ‘70s touring band as its cornerstone.
King continued to record on a regular basis for Federal, laying down entire instrumental albums as well as a slew of vocal platters, although hits grew nonexistent for him after that. In 1963, Freddie moved back to Texas; he would live in Dallas for the rest of his days. His stint at Federal and its King parent label extended into 1966. After that, he made two albums for Atlantic’s Cotillion subsidiary under saxman King Curtis’ production aegis that brought him to the end of the decade. Curtis didn’t try any too hard to lock down fresh material for Freddie, relying on King’s innate intensity to carry the day no matter how familiar the songs on Freddie King is a Blues Master (1968) and My Feeling for the Blues (1969).
Alas, despite the growing interest in high-energy electric blues and blues-rock from a young, long-haired white demographic (Eric Clapton and a legion of other rockers had championed Freddie’s guitar work, both through word of mouth and their own covers of his songs), King’s commercial momentum had stalled. It took a producer switch to Russell and a refocus on conquering young rock fans to boost Freddie several rungs on the touring ladder. Soon he’d be heating up stadium stages for top rock bands rather than headlining intimate blues clubs.
Getting Ready…, Freddie’s first Shelter long-player, was cut in October of 1970 at Chess Records’ in-house Chicago studios and introduced the new King. Its signature track “Going Down” was a piledriving Don Nix composition that was closer to hard rock in some ways than West Side blues (or Lone Star blues either, for that matter), though there was no mistaking King’s blasting guitar work and booming vocal. Russell and Nix were largely responsible for the set’s other two originals; the rest of the set strictly consisted of hallowed blues standards, given a somewhat slicker sheen than Freddie’s previous output had.
The same formula defined King’s pair of followup albums, 1972’s Texas Cannonball and the next year’s Woman Across the River—both dominated by time-tested blues chestnuts done King’s way, with the burners always turned up to full blast. The latter set managed a lower rung bow on Billboard’s pop LP charts in the summer of ‘73, testifying to Freddie’s growing crossover appeal. He was now opening for WAR, Creedence Clearwater Revival, ZZ Top, and Grand Funk Railroad, threatening to blow each of them clear off the stage with his high-flying guitar pyrotechnics.
Robert Stigwood’s RSO label—home to Eric Clapton, the Bee Gees, and Yvonne Elliman rather than any other blues luminaries--turned out to be Freddie’s last recording home. He came aboard in 1974, cutting the studio LP Burglar under blues maven and former Blue Horizon Records boss Mike Vernon’s supervision. It showcased a funkier, more R&B-oriented King than his trio of Shelter albums had. Two-thirds of Larger Than Life, King’s ‘75 RSO followup, was laid down live at Armadillo World Headquarters, one of Freddie’s main gigging spots in Austin, Texas.
The three discs comprising this generous collection capture King live and in his mature prime as he criss-crossed the country and the globe, bringing his hair-raisingly intense brand of electric blues to the hinterlands. His younger brother, bassist Benny Turner, was inevitably by his side onstage. That’s Benny contributing the vocal harmony on two versions of Big Joe Turner’s “Wee Baby Blues” on this set (King introduces it as a Willie Dixon song because Dixon and his Big Three Trio cut the ditty as “You Sure Look Good To Me” at the end of 1947), both of them sublime.
The drum chair rotated often in Freddie’s touring combo; Chicagoan Charlie Robinson, Charles Meyers, Mississippi native Calep Emphrey, Jr. (who somehow managed to play in the bands of all three Kings), and other timekeepers rolled through the ‘70s lineup. Ditto the rhythm guitar slot, where Andrew “Jr. Boy” Jones and Edd Lively were among the backing fretsmen (Dallas axeman Floyd Bonner gets a shout-out prior to his solo on disc two’s smoldering version of “Have You Ever Loved A Woman”). Deacon Jones, a former mainstay of Baby Huey and the Babysitters, was a fixture on organ and Alvin Hemphill occupied that bench at one time as well, while Boston recruit David Maxwell and still-active Dallas keyboardist Lewis Stephens each put in lengthy stretches on the 88s behind Freddie.
Apart from his signature theme “Hide Away,” King tended to avoid his Federal-era hits in concert during the ‘70s, preferring to dig deeply into celebrated warhorses that included T-Bone Walker’s immortal “Stormy Monday” and Earl King’s “Let The Good Times Roll” (aka “Darling Honey Angel Child”). He inevitably rendered them fresh and sizzling with his roaring vocals and blazing guitar pyrotechnics.
There was room for a few of his recent Shelter triumphs on the nightly set lists, notably the piledriving “Going Down” and a funky reprise of “Big Leg Woman (With A Short Short Mini Skirt)” (a 1970 hit for its writer, Israel “Popper Stopper” Tolbert, even if Shelter failed to credit it as such upon release), as well as a nod back to King’s Windy City days with a reprise of Jimmy Reed’s obscure “Signals Of Love.” Without fail, Freddie’s Hookeresque instrumental show closer “Boogie Funk” was there too, the epitome of blistering instrumental heat.
The end came all too soon and most unexpectedly for Freddie. Even those close to him failed to recognize the signs that King’s health was failing until it was too late. Freddie played a gig on Christmas evening of ‘76, went into Dallas’ Presbyterian Hospital the next day, and never came out. He died on December 28, 1976 at the absurdly premature age of 42. It was reported that he died from a litany of maladies: bleeding ulcers, a blood clot in his leg, pancreatitis, and heart failure.
Living his life in the fast lane, much of it on the road in a tour bus where poker was the prevalent leisure activity, and substituting Bloody Marys for anything resembling nutritious food had clearly taken a deadly toll on the big blues guitarist. Chet Flippo’s Rolling Stone obituary reported that RSO was in the process of releasing Freddie at the time of his passing. That didn’t stop Stigwood’s label from cobbling together a posthumous last album on him, (1934-1976). 44 years after his death, he’s still revered by blues guitar aficionados around the world.
Electric blues guitar has never been in more powerful hands than those of Freddie King.
--Bill Dahl
SOURCES
Blues Records 1943-70: A Selective Discography, Vol. 1, A to K, by Mike Leadbitter and Neil Slaven (London: Record Information Services, 1987)
Joel Whitburn’s Top R&B Singles 1955-1990, by Joel Whitburn (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, Inc., 1991)
Blues Unlimited, No. 110, Oct.-Nov. 1974: “Madison Nite Owl,” by Mike Leadbitter
Living Blues, No. 31, March-April 1977: “Freddie King–-1934-1976,” by Mit Schuller, Bruce Iglauer, Janne Rosenqvist, and Hans Schweitz
Rolling Stone, February 10, 1977: “Freddie King, Blues guitarist, dead at 42,” by Chet Flippo
The Official Freddie King Site: http://www.freddiekingsite.com/