Jimbo and I arrived at the same place by different routes run in different generations. The phrase Blues Brothers comes to mind but that Belushi-Akroyd film only skirted a serious matter. Jimbo and I go all the way to the bottom of the chitlin’ bucket.
In the ‘thirties, I was a runny-nosed, barefoot white boy running up and down the alleys of a small town. Nearly every house had behind it a servant’s house occupied by a black woman who lived there rent free in return for taking care of the white man’s house and doing some cooking.
And you think: Oh, those wealthy families . . ..
Small merchants who barely made ends meet bought homes with the small back-lot houses. Times were hard in the ‘thirties. Maybe we’ll know: the economic indicators have raised storm warnings.
At times a black man came around with a guitar to sit on the truncated porch out back and play and sing. I was allowed to stand (quietly) and listen.
As a teenager in the 1950s Jim worked at the long defunct Liberty Cash Grocery. He carried trash to the back of the lot. Across the street was a black juke joint, and it got cranked up in the evenings before Jim’s shift expired. With no air conditioning, the door of the place was wide open. Jim was not sprinkled with blues, but immersed. Today, a retired Florida faculty member, he still digs it.
Both of us tend to favor the Chicago re-styling of the genre meaning the electrified Muddy Waters et al.
Three Kings came to occupy space on my record shelf. B. B. King was hardly more than a boy when he played a joint six miles from my house. Whites didn’t go there at night, the only time there was music. I dropped by now and then during daylight hours, had a beer and visited with the folks.
Years later, B.B.’s The Thrill Is Gone was released. It was rich with string fugues with his guitar and even today is easy to take. The form, though, was to get more muscular.
Then came Albert King. He washed cars at Buchanan Chevrolet and bought guitar strings from the little shop run by Jim’s mom. Albert exploded on the scene. He played the Harvard Bowl, Fillmore and with the St. Louis symphony.
Shortly after this we became acquainted at the blues club he ran 17 miles from my home. He was a fine fellow and at the top of his game (see “Live Wire Blues Power”) was a nonpareil. His voice in these years was better than B.B.’s. As to guitar virtuosity, that is in the ear of the beholder.
Albert smoke a damned pipe and I told him one day, “You’re now inhaling that pipe.”
“I know.”
“This isn’t good.”
“I know.”
“It’s killing your voice.”
“I know.”
His life was a merry-go-round of engagements. As his fame faded, this happens quickly, he played more and more club dates. Three hundred a year. His home was on the interstates.
He died in Memphis in 1992 while in his late sixties.
All well and good, but the king of Kings is the late Freddy, the Texas Tornado. Although BB and Albert were personal heroes, Freddy’s energy and inventiveness and faithful blues dedication put him at the top, perhaps of all blues players. His Shelter Records Years the Best of Freddie King is that rarity in that there is not a single weak cut.
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