Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 90

Record label: Stax

Produced: Jim Stewart

Recorded: Stax Studios, McLemore Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee; March 3, September 3 and November 2, 1966; May 17 and June 9, 1967

Released: July 1967

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Albert King (g, v); Steve Cropper (g); Booker T Jones (p); Isaac Hayes (p); Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn (b); Al Jackson Jr (d); Wayne Jackson (t); Andrew Love (s, flute); Joe Arnold (s); Jim Stewart (supervision)

Track listing: Born Under A Bad Sign (S); Crosscut Saw (S); Kansas City; Oh Pretty Woman (S/US); Down Don’t Bother Me; The Hunter; I Almost Lost My Mind; Personal Manager; Laundromat Blues (S/US); As The Years Go Passing By; The Very Thought Of You

Running time: 34.41

Current CD: Collectables label reissue has slightly different tracklisting: Born Under A Bad Sign (S); Crosscut Saw (S); Down Don’t Bother Me; Funk-Shun; Kansas City; Oh Pretty Woman (S/US); I Almost Lost My Mind; Personal Manager; Overall Junction; Laundromat Blues

Further listening: Live Wire/Blues Power (1968), live recordings from the Fillmore shows mentioned above; Ultimate Collection (1983), a 2-CD round-up

Further reading: Soulsville, USA: The Story Of Stax Records (Rob Bowman, 2003); www.bluesnet.hub.org/artists/albert.king.htm

Download: emusic

King – a left-hander who finger-picked an upside-down, right-handed Flying V – was into his forties with only a couple of R&B hits to his name when he signed to Stax. Admittedly, he already had a smokin’ reputation, but the Stax house band were to help him reach his true soul-blues potential.

After a trio of unsuccessful singles, two studio stints in mid-’67 provided the bulk of an album which was to exert massive influence on other guitarists, and at the same time launch King as a darling of the white college and stadium circuit. Wayne Jackson, who played trumpet on these and literally hundreds of other hit-making sessions for the label, said: ‘Albert was the sweetest man you could imagine: a man of the Old South. He used to call me his whistle-tooter. It was a very happy studio. Steve Cropper and Al Jackson ran the recordings. Jim Stewart [company boss] wasn’t a producer – Al knew all the chords and lyrics better than anyone. He would stop things if they were going wrong. Albert’s guitar was always out of tune with everything else, but he was such a strong man he would just bend those notes back in! The band kept things simple because we were all young guys learning together. We didn’t know how to play it any better!’

The 10-bar-blues smoulder of the title track opens proceedings (‘Sometimes the funk got so thick you could spread it on bread and eat it’), and the bad-ass syncopations of Crosscut Saw keep the heat on. The jump-shuffle of Kansas City is a welcome throwback, and his rendition of The Very Thought Of You proves that King could sing. But ultimately the guitar’s the thing. The stinging, howling, weeping solo on Personal Manager is, simply, one of the greatest ever: King may have played from a relatively small stock of phrases but he made every one of them count.

The following year, on the back of the album’s artistic success, King opened for Hendrix at San Francisco’s Fillmore. As a teenager Hendrix had worshipped King. He never stopped, even recording Born Under A Bad Sign in 1969.