Side one focuses on Freddie King the singer, which is fine since his vocals are soulful and strong and can easily carry a tune. Side tune showcases King the exceptional guitarist, which is what he earned his laurels with.
It seems that the idea here was to put King in a more "contemporary" context, i.e. give the vocal tunes a soulful touch and beef up the instrumental pieces with some funky wah-wah. Blues purists may dismiss this approach (see amazon customer reviews for some entertaining examples), but everyone else will enjoy this a lot. And a lot to enjoy there is, from the really cool "Play It Cool" to the driving "That Will Never Do", from the deeply felt slow blues "It's Too Late, She's Gone" to the wafting organ on "Get Out Of My Live, Woman".
The remake of "Hideaway" is simply killer. Here, as on all the instrumental pieces, King get's ample room to shine with his razor sharp lead lines. His restless noodling will bring a shine to every guitar lover's eyes. These non-vocal pieces wouldn't be out of place on some blaxploitation-movie soundtrack, btw.
Personally, i'm not too happy with the sequencing, though. Five instrumental tracks in a row can become a little tiresome. Mixing these tracks with the vocal pieces makes for a much more varied programme.
This is an original German Cotillion issue. There's more hissing here than i like to have on my rips, but as always, no noise reduction was applied.
Freddie King: Freddie King Is A Blues Master
Cotillion SD 9004, USA, 1969
A1 Play It Cool 3:49
A2 That Will Never Do 2:20
A3 It's Too Late, She's Gone 2:20
A4 Blue Shadows 3:35
A5 Today I Sing The Blues 3:55
A6 Get Out Of My Live, Woman 3:32
B1 Hideaway 2:26
B2 Funky 2:26
B3 Hot Tomato 2:45
B4 Wide Open 3:00
B5 Sweet Thing 2:30
B6 Let Me Down Easy 3:00
Produced by King Curtis
Lead Guitar, Lead Vocals: Freddie King
Guitar: Billy Butler
Keyboards: Gary Illingworth, James Booker
Bass: Gerry Jemmott
Drums: Norman Pride
Saxophone: David Newman, King Curtis, Willie Bridges
Trumpet: Joe Newman, Martin Banks, Melvin Lastie
8 comments:
http://freetexthost.com/vklscra3uq
pass: hideaway
Good one Porco, this one I already knew, exxxcelent FK album indeed. Still enjoying the Blakey album you posted a while back very much. I've seen him live once, just shortly before he passed away, at the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague....
thanks for all your input, as always,
peace, E-mile
Thinking of all the jazz greats that passed away these last two years, there's good reason to treasure the memory of such live experiences.
I really enjoyed the Freddie King instrumentals. I'm always a sucker for a good electric blues instrumental, even though I am predominantly an acoustic guitar instrumental fan.
So I am wondering, do you know the work of Earl Hooker? He was John Lee's cousin. He issued a pretty good number of blues instrumentals and was a heck of a guitarist. You should search him out, if you haven't already made his acquaintance.
Howard,
i heard one album from Hooker, called "Two Bugs and a roach" (great title!). Some very nice music on it, with Hooker making effective use of the wah-wah.
When I hear the name Freddie King I always think of the Grand Funk tune "We're An American Band" with the line, "Up all night with Freddie King, I've got to tell you, poker's his thing". Grand Funk's drummer explained the line this way:
"Freddie King was the opening act for us, the great Blues guitar player from Texas. It always struck me as funny that he would make his band play poker with him every night. We used to sit in on some of the poker games, and that's where that line came from. His band, he'd pay them, and then he'd go win all the money back so they were broke and they'd have to keep playing for him - it was a great deal. A lot of people don't understand the Freddie King part because they don't know who Freddie King is. Anybody who knows about Freddie King immediately picks it up. People who don't say, 'What are you saying, that Focus can't sing?'"
Anyway, I enjoyed the album, especially the instrumentals with their funky and groovy soul-jazz type approach. This is the first Freddie King album in my possession. Thanks!
Funny to hear that a legend like King did the opening for Grand Funk.
Love the story about King getting his money back via poker!
Thank you LPRouge, the King deserves the best attention from us all.
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