Freddie King
Freddie King (September 3, 1934 – December 28, 1976) was an American blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is considered one of the "Three Kings of the Blues Guitar" (along with Albert King and B.B. King, none of whom was a blood relative).[1][2] Mostly known for his soulful and powerful voice and distinctive guitar playing, King had a major influence on electric blues music and on many later blues guitarists.
Freddie King
Fred King
September 3, 1934
Gilmer, Texas, U.S.
December 28, 1976 (aged 42)
Dallas, Texas, U.S.
- Musician
- songwriter
- Guitar
- vocals
1952–1976
-
Jessie Burnett(m. 1952)
Born in Gilmer, Texas, King became acquainted with the guitar at the age of six. He started learning the guitar from his mother and his uncle. King moved to Chicago when he was a teenager; there he formed his first band the Every Hour Blues Boys with guitarist Jimmie Lee Robinson and drummer Frank "Sonny" Scott. As he was repeatedly being rejected by Chess Records, he got signed to Federal Records, and got his break with single "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" and instrumental "Hide Away", which reached number five on the Billboard magazine's rhythm and blues chart in 1961. It later became a blues standard. King based his guitar style on Texas blues and Chicago blues influences. The album Freddy King Sings showcased his singing talents and included the record chart hits "You've Got to Love Her with a Feeling" and "I'm Tore Down".[3] He later became involved with producers who were more oriented to rhythm and blues and rock and was one of the first bluesmen to have a multiracial backing band at performances.[4]
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by ZZ Top in 2012 and into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1982. His instrumental "Hide Away" was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of "500 Songs that Shaped Rock".[5] He was ranked 19th in the Rolling Stone magazine's 2023 edition of 250 greatest guitarists of all time.[6]
Biography[edit]
1934–1952: Early life[edit]
Fred King was born in 1934 to Ella Mae King and J. T. Christian. When Freddie was 6 years old, his mother and his uncle taught him to play the guitar. In 1949, he and his family moved from Dallas to the South Side of Chicago.
In 1952, King started working in a steel mill. In the same year he married another Texas native, Jessie Burnett. They had seven children together.
1952–1959: Move to Chicago and early works[edit]
Almost as soon as he had moved to Chicago, King started sneaking into South Side nightclubs, where he heard blues performed by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, T-Bone Walker, Elmore James, and Sonny Boy Williamson. King formed his first band, the Every Hour Blues Boys, with the guitarist Jimmie Lee Robinson and the drummer Frank "Sonny" Scott. In 1952, while employed at a steel mill, the eighteen-year-old King occasionally worked as a sideman with such bands as the Little Sonny Cooper Band and Earl Payton's Blues Cats. In 1953 he recorded with the latter for Parrot Records, but these recordings were never released. As the 1950s progressed, King played with several of Muddy Waters's sidemen and other Chicago mainstays, including the guitarists Jimmy Rogers, Robert Lockwood Jr., Eddie Taylor, and Hound Dog Taylor; the bassist Willie Dixon; the pianist Memphis Slim; and the harmonicist Little Walter.
In 1956 he cut his first record as a leader, for El-Bee Records. The A-side was "Country Boy", a duet with Margaret Whitfield.[7] The B-side was a King vocal. Both tracks feature the guitar of Robert Lockwood Jr., who during these years was also adding rhythm backing and fills to Little Walter's records.[8]
King was repeatedly rejected in auditions for the South Side's Chess Records, the premier blues label, which was the home of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter. The complaint was that King sang too much like B.B. King. A newer blues scene, lively with nightclubs and upstart record companies, was burgeoning on the West Side, though. The bassist and producer Willie Dixon, during a period of estrangement from Chess in the late 1950s, asked King to come to Cobra Records for a session, but the results have never been heard. Meanwhile, King established himself as perhaps the biggest musical force on the West Side. He played along with Magic Sam and reputedly played backing guitar, uncredited, on some of Sam's tracks for Mel London's Chief and Age labels,[8] though King does not stand out on them.
1959–1966: Federal Records[edit]
In 1959 King got to know Sonny Thompson, a pianist, producer, and A&R man for Cincinnati's King Records. King Records' owner, Syd Nathan, signed King to the subsidiary Federal Records in 1960. King recorded his debut single for the label on August 26, 1960: "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" backed with "You've Got to Love Her with a Feeling" (again credited as "Freddy" King). From the same recording session at the King Studios in Cincinnati, Ohio, King cut the instrumental "Hide Away", which the next year reached number five on the R&B chart and number 29 on the Pop chart, an unprecedented accomplishment for a blues instrumental at a time when the genre was still largely unknown to white audiences. It was originally released as the B-side of "I Love the Woman". "Hide Away" was King's melange of a theme by Hound Dog Taylor and parts by others, such as "The Walk", by Jimmy McCracklin, and "Peter Gunn", as credited by King. The title of the tune refers to Mel's Hide Away Lounge, a popular blues club on the West Side of Chicago.[9] Willie Dixon later claimed that he had recorded King performing "Hide Away" for Cobra Records in the late 1950s, but such a version has never surfaced.[10] "Hide Away" became a blues standard.
After their success with "Hide Away", King and Thompson recorded thirty instrumentals, including "The Stumble", "Just Pickin'", "Sen-Sa-Shun", "Side Tracked", "San-Ho-Zay", "High Rise", and "The Sad Nite Owl".[11][12] They recorded vocal tracks throughout this period but often released the tunes as instrumentals on albums.
During the Federal period, King toured with many notable R&B artists of the day, including Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and James Brown.
Musical style[edit]
King had an intuitive style, often creating guitar parts with vocal nuances.[24] He achieved this by using the open-string sound associated with Texas blues and the raw, screaming tones of West Side, Chicago blues. King's combination of the Texas and Chicago sounds gave his music a more contemporary feel than that of many Chicago bands who were still performing 1950s-style music, and he befriended the younger generation of blues musicians. In his early career he played a solid-body gold-top Gibson Les Paul with P-90 pickups.[25] He later played several slimline semi-hollow body Gibson electric guitars, including an ES-335, ES-345, and ES-355.[25] He used a plastic thumb pick and a metal index-finger pick.[25]