Musicians who were influenced by Albert King include Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall and Mike Bloomfield but, no where is the influence more apparent than when listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn. As a matter of fact one of the most enjoyable CD’s to just lay back and give a listen to is the In Session
Born Under a Bad Sign was actually King’s second album and is number 499 of Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Essential Recordings. The songs on it are short as was the requirement for commercial success in that era. Some blues fans considered it to be the greatest blues album ever. King of the Blues Guitar
There are 59 Albert King albums out there and no shortage of great ones. Here are a few other picks.
Albert King – King of the Blues Guitar
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I like the In Session with SRV album and the bits where they are just chatting between the songs is fascinating. However, I think one of the saddest bits is where Albert is telling SRV that he’s good but that he’s going to get better. It’s tragic that we never got to hear just how good SRV was going to get.
Wow – thanks David, I think I missed that part – I remember the part about Albert King marveling at how good SRV was – but didn’t hear that comment. It is touching, thanks for this and your comments. Its a pleasure to have you on the site. Let me know who else you like and we’ll do some blogs on them.
Thanks for the offer. Essentially I am a rock fan who discovered the Blue relatively late in my musical development. (I remember stopping dead in my tracks while walking the dog because I was listening to AC/DC – If You Want Blood and I suddenly realised: “They’re playing the Blues!”) So rather than starting with Albert King and moving to Hendrix, I started with Hendrix and went backwards to Albert King. |:-)
I suppose therefore I mostly like the usual suspects and read blogs like this to widen my horizons. At the moment, I am obsessed with Joe Bonamassa and through him discovered the sadly deceased Chris Whitley. I saw B B King in concert and loved the “Riding With The King stuff he did with Clapton. John Lee Hooker was a genius. Pushing further back still I found a compilation of Leadbelly songs that was fantastic (“Ah… so that’s where Jimmy Page got his riffs from!”)
So, thank you for your comments and thanks for educating me about the Blues.
Just listened again to “In Session” again. The bit I’m talking about is in “Pep Talk” (track 5) towards the end.
I love this video of Joe Bonamassa jamming with Eric Clapton @ Royal Albert Hall…check it!
http://bit.ly/ajKV2l