When the contemporary blues firmament was in dire need of a new bigger-than-life hero in the mid-1960s, someone armed with a fresh, blazing electric guitar conception and the unyielding power to triumph over an invading platoon of Blues-rockers whose decibel levels often exceeded their talent–Albert King was ready and willing to heed the call. Actually, he’d been striving toward Blues stardom for more than a decade.
King was a massively constructed powerhouse who employed an obscure minor-key tuning that rendered his sound singular. He had a big advantage, too: pulling the strings of Lucy, his Gibson Flying V (not to be confused with B.B.’s Lucille–and no, they weren’t related except in their shared love for playing Blues) from the top down instead of the bottom up was a luxury the southpaw enjoyed because his strings were set up for a righty (creating a new technique – upside down guitar playing).
King’s glory years were spent at Stax Records, the Memphis-based soul empire better known for its brilliant productions by Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, Sam & Dave, and Rufus and Carla Thomas than for its occasional forays into the Blues. But when Albert inked a pact with the label in 1966, that immediately changed. Booker T. & the MG’s, the Stax house band, turned out to be a world-class Blues combo when situated behind the towering, pipe-puffing southpaw. The combination made Blues history–rewrote it, in fact.
Born Albert Nelson in Indianola, Mississippi on April 25, 1923, King came of age living with his family on a farm near Forrest City, Arkansas. After getting his hands in shape by plucking at a string nailed to the wall, Albert moved up to a Guild hollow-body in 1942. Lonnie Johnson, T-Bone Walker, and Blind Lemon Jefferson rated with King’s idols, but there was a more exotic sound on his mind too–lilting Hawaiian music that perhaps accounts for his massive string-bending technique.
Assembling his first pro combo in 1952, King and his In The Groove Boys played the juke joints around Osceola, Arkansas, where one of their stops was the Dipsy Doodle, run by Son Seals’ father; Seals would later join King’s band as a drummer. Succumbing to itchy feet, Albert journeyed up to St. Louis and then to Gary, Indiana, where he sat behind a drum kit with Jimmy Reed. The versatile King kept a steady beat on Reed’s first two 1953 dates for Vee-Jay Records, and made his own debut single, as a guitarist, for Chicago deejay Al Benson’s Parrot label before year’s end.
But ‘Bad Luck Blues’ didn’t hit, so King returned to Arkansas for a spell. St. Louis beckoned anew, and now Albert’s signature lead guitar style was developing fast. In 1959, he signed with Bobbin Records, a St. Louis concern that also boasted Little Milton Campbell and Fontella Bass on its roster. There he waxed a stinging ‘Ooh-Ee Baby,’ the jumping, jazzy ‘Let’s Have A Natural Ball,’ and the grinding slow Blues ‘Don’t Throw Your Love On Me So Strong,’ which became his first national hit in 1961 when leased to the considerably larger King label.
But none of King’s subsequent Bobbin and King 45s matched its success, so after a pair of singles for Leo Gooden’s tiny Coun-Tree imprint, Albert was primed to join the mighty Stax roster, a signing instigated by label promotion head Al Bell. King’s first Stax platter in 1966, ‘Laundromat Blues,’ kicked off his personal hit parade, followed by his searing remake of Tommy McClennan’s ‘Crosscut Saw’ (given a Latin tinge by Al Jackson, Jr.’s rumbling drums) and the Booker T. Jones/William Bell-penned ‘Born Under A Bad Sign.’
All three of those classics were aboard King’s 1967 Stax LP Born Under a Bad Sign, a seminal set without a shred of filler (even when Albert crooned ‘The Very Thought Of You,’ it clicked). The album currently holds a spot in the Blues Hall of Fame, but it wasn’t the only essential album King made during his Stax tenure, which stretched into the mid-1970s.
Though it held only eight selections, 1972’s I’ll Play the Blues For You was of the same stratospheric consistency. The cast had changed substantially by the time Albert stepped into the studio to lay down the LP–instead of the now-split MG’s, the grooves were supplied by the reformed Bar-Kays and the Movement (the Memphis Horns were still hanging tough). Jim Stewart and Al Jackson, Jr. had relinquished King’s production reins to Allen Jones and Henry Bush, who pulled double duty as arrangers.
The centerpiece of the set is the surprisingly smooth title track, an unabashedly Soul-styled mid-tempo piece sporting a seductive rap in the middle yet still allowing King plenty of room to cut loose on Lucy. Written by Jerry Beach, ‘I’ll Play The Blues For You’ proved an R&B hit in the late summer of ’72 and afforded Albert the perfect slogan to paint on the side of his touring bus (virtually always piloted by the man himself).
Two more hits were also aboard. ‘Angel Of Mercy’ is sublime Blues with King moaning a litany of earthbound complaints, while his steamy cover of ‘Breaking Up Somebody’s Home,’ an Ann Peebles hit for cross town’s Hi Records, charted despite her success with it 10 months earlier. The rest of the set was no less vicious ‘High Cost of Loving’ copped some of its groove from King’s ’66 outing ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ but benefited from sharp lyrics, while ‘Little Brother’ romps over an R&B thrust.
Though it never charted, ‘Don’t Burn Down The Bridge (Cause You Might Want To Come Back)’ is a certified King classic, sporting an ominous minor-key feel. Albert came up with a violence-laden sequel to his first Stax hit with ‘Answer To The Laundromat Blues,’ and with help from the Bar-Kays, transformed Marvin Gaye’s 1965 smash ‘I’ll Be Doggone’ into a funkfest of royal proportions.
I’ll Play the Blues For You is a magnificent album deserving enshrinement right alongside Born Under a Bad Sign as the two crowning long-playing achievements of this late legend’s glorious career.
— (Blues Foundation press release, 1998.)