I might as well rank the three prominent bluesmen with the surname King, alphabetically, as that is the order in which I appreciate Albert, BB and Freddie. To tell the truth, Freddie King is very underrepresented in my collection, mostly because, when I was buying blues CDs, I didn’t encounter his albums as often as those of Albert and BB.
BB King characteristic guitar style is based on an expressive vibrato, fluid single-note solos and smooth, melodic phrasing and he incorporates elements of jazz and swing though R & B and funk also infuses his later period releases, chasing a contemporary audience, and he released a couple of collaborative albums, of which Riding with the King (2000), his recording partnership with Eric Clapton, is probably the most rewarding.
Albert King's approach is more raw and aggressive, characterised by playing a right-handed guitar (famously, a Gibson Flying V) upside down, as he’s left handed, with powerful bending of notes, which gives him that gritty, piercing tone, and a relatively small repertoire of punchy licks that he mixes and matches into those formidable solos he’s known for. His releases have also followed commercial trends, from the ‘70s onwards, to seek maximum commercial gain from a music that was increasingly marginalised and his collaboration is the In Session set recorded with Stevie Ray Vaughan who was deeply influenced by Albert King.
I heard a BB King track before I’d heard anything by Albert King but I bought an Albert King album well before a I bought one featuring BB tracks.
In 1997, when I began buying LP records seriously, the record bar of the OK Bazaars department store in Cape Town had a two side display stand with records at a discount, presumably the stock nobody wanted to buy and there was always several blues albums amongst the pop and rock records in which I had no interest. The albums were priced at 99c, which meant 10 records for R10,00, a real bargain for my quarterly excursions to the City. Up to the end of 1976 these trips were focussed on buying as many model airplane kits as possible. From January 1977 my focus was on records, as I’d just acquire a proper mini hi-fi set up for my room.
The first records I owned were rock albums but albums such as Dr Feelgood’s Malpractice and Cream’s Cream’s Cream Live engendered an interest in the blues. Part of the reason for buying these blues albums at the OK Bazaars in Cape Town was that interest and part of the reason was the budget friendly price.
An ABC BluesWay compilation and Albert King’s Years Gone By were amongst the first batch of blues albums I owned.
The BB King track “Blue Shadows Falling” from BB King in London (1971) was featured on the ABC BluesWay compilation and was the first BB King tune I ever heard. By the time I bought the record I already knew who BB and Albert King were but it was theoretical knowledge.
“Blue Shadows Falling” had a heavy, relentless rhythm track and was as close to blues rock as BB ever got, with backing by English luminaries in their blues scene, and it spoiled me for the rest of his oeuvre, once I started delving in to it.
Years Gone By (1969) was a revelation. Albert King is backed by the Stax house band, which gives the tunes a tough, tight foundation for King’s big voice and stinging, piercing lead guitar.
My second BB King purchase was a collection of ‘50s recordings with a big, horn driven band and his gospel driven vocals and, to me, a distressingly short supply of lead guitar or, at least, not the kind of lead guitar I appreciated. The songs and arrangements sounded like 1940’s big swing bands with gospel style vocals and with a bit of incidental lead guitar
I didn’t play that album much and it put me off any of BB King’s other and later records for many years.
Albert King’s tougher, small combo blues was more appealing and when I saw Live Wire / Bluespower (1968) in a record store, as a new record, I bought it without further thought and was once again rewarded with more of the best of his style, with “Bluespower” as an exceptional high point of his piercing, emphatic style of lead playing. The songs were recorded at Fillmore East performances, where King was exposed to young, hip, (mostly) white audiences, while serving as warm up act for rock bands. I suppose the tight combo backing and King’s heavy lead guitar style resonated best with an audience immersed in the worship of the “guitar hero.”
Many years later, when I began collecting CDs, there was a great deal more blues albums from many different artists available and inevitably I enlarged my collection of Albert Kings albums as well as, eventually, BB King albums, including BB King in London for exposure to the full selection of those tracks.
I discovered, on the one hand, that Albert King also started as an urban bluesman, not dissimilar to BB King, fronting a large, horn-drive band too, before he joined Stax and, on the other hand, that BB King recorded music as tough and stripped down as Albert. Both artists have substantial discographies, with BB’s outstripping Albert’s, and with a wide variety of styles and approached depending on the musical fashions at the time of recording.
I’ve developed as much of an appreciation of BB King’s music as I have a love for Albert King’s records though, if I were forced to choose one collection over the other, Albert’s catalogue will be what I will keep.
On the whole, I prefer the visceral punch I take from Albert King’s best records to the more sophisticated, almost showbiz approach of BB King’s music.
For me the contrast is illustrated by a show of the Japanese Blues Carnival 1989, where Albert King opens for BB King. Presumably, BB, as one of the most lauded bluesmen ever and certified Ambassador of the Blues, was afforded the key position of headliner because he had the highest profile of the two men.
Albert’s backing band is a small combo of keyboards, drums, bass and a two man horn section, who are dressed like and might well be a night club showband who are technically adept enough can back any musician. For the sake of emphasising that it’s 1989, the keyboard player does a couple of rinky dink ‘80s style solos on her electronic keyboard and the bass player gets a solo turn to channel his inner Stanley Jordan. Meanwhile, Albert plays his patented, ferocious, timeless blues licks in a crowd pleasing set.
BB King, on the other hand, has a larger, more sophisticated yet also contemporary band to back his crowd pleasers performed in the showbiz blues style he’s perfected for events like these. This is not to say that he’s going through the motions but BB King’s performances somehow are less engaging than Albert King’s and certainly doesn’t connect emotionally. This is blues as simply a commercial music genre.
Both these guys, at least once a show, will give examples of what the blues is, or is supposed to be, as so many other musicians and musicologists and archivists do. In Albert King’s “Bluespower” and ”I’ll Play the Blues for You,” for example, the blues seems to be just an expression of every day sadness as opposed to the reaction to racist oppression and poverty so many people claim as the root base of the blues, a folk expression of socio-political and cultural concerns. To me, most of the interviews I’ve read or listened with bluesmen mostly talking to White people, the explanations of what the blues are, seem to be regurgitated clichés designed for consumption by eager White people who want to believe that there is indeed some deeper meaning behind the music. Where rock and roll is just frivolous, blues is deeply serious.
However the blues may have originated, on cotton plantations or lumber camps and possibly as comments on downtrodden lives, it soon became no more than a commercial sound, a new trend in music and, given how many blues artists there have been over the years and how many are still playing the blues, there’s no way that the blues was anything but a musical genre some musicians chose to make a living in, rather than as a vehicle for socio-political or cultural commentaries.
Muddy Waters preferred to be a musician rather than be a farm labourer. Robert Johnson and others preferred to be itinerant musicians rather than taking up steady employment. The blues musicians who migrated North to Chicago and Detroit and who had day jobs didn’t play music after hours because they had a burning political mission to highlight the injustices of the Deep South but simply to entertain and to make a little extra money. The blues artists who recorded, did so for the money and they were fortunate that blues, in its various iterations, was a popular genre until the advent of more sophisticated genres that appealed to younger urban generations who thought of the blues as old-fashioned and even backward.
Both Albert and BB King’s songs dealt with a variety of topics but the most common themes are woman trouble or a celebration of the patriarchy; there songs didn’t comment much, if at all, on current political or social events or situations. Even if they did play blues, those blues were for entertainment and upliftment. You weren’t supposed to leave a show by either King deep in the throes of depression because of the songs they performed for you. You were supposed to have a good time at the show and not sit there analysing the lyrics and pondering their meaning and significance.
I don’t like ranking musicians, albums or songs. I like some, I don’t like others. For this reason, I don’t care whether BB King might’ve been a better musician, singer or general bluesman than Albert King, or the other way around. If I’m pressed to answer the burning question of which of the two I’d be willing never to listen to again, I’d say it would be BB King, and that’s simply because Albert King’s oeuvre and guitar style speak to me more substantively viscerally than that of BB King. I’d rather not be compelled to make that choice though, as I enjoy BB King’s blues too.
