I also agree with pmac. These recordings are timeless and stand on their own quite well. No comparisons with the Stax sides are necessary. This was Albert coming into his own with HIS sound on HIS terms.
This stuff was largely disregarded as another B.B. clone for a long time, but the passage of time has made that connection less of an issue as both guys developed into different players - I'd say the Stax songs were better but the raw edge here has it's appeal.
Aaah my dear FO'B, you always warm my heart with you generous sharing of YOUR experience with Musicholism and the wonders of new musical revelations - you remind me that perhaps I too should do a little more personal writing and sharing here -- perhaps the answer to a more fulfilling experience for moi is to slow down and spend more time on the post crafting, thus creating more distance between posts and time for response - I've been more like a daily columnist than a weekly or bi weekly magazine
Nice post KC - I do possess this CD (and most of the other AK discs available) and love his style and vocals - Not a flashy guitar sound but hits the soulful spot and is unmistakable
Thanks for posting this. I love all three kings but there is something about Albert the giant and the joy he expressed when playing and singing that makes him my favorite even if he was not the best when compared with Riley B. I have never seen a photograph of him not smiling or entranced by the music he was playing. I didn't have the pleasure of seeing him live but I'll never forgot his PBS concert with Stevie Ray Vaughan which was a mixture of passing the torch, encouraging an adoring and earnest student, and playing so naturally that he made it look effortless, as if he had been born with a guitar in his hands. His posthumous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame pays no small homage to his influence. I never regarded Albert King as a clone of B. B. because I thought his style of playing quite different but this pre-Stax material allows me to see how he developed. I don't think B. B. viewed it that way either. After all, he once said "Albert wasn't my brother in blood, but he was my brother in blues." Then again it sometimes seems to me that almost every modern blues guitarist is regarded as emulating B. B. King in one way or another and T-Bone Walker's and Lonnie Johnson's influences go unmentioned.
As usual my comment will be... a link to an ALBERT KING folder with 7 original albums: http://www.mediafire.com/folder/rd65uhr715e63/ALBERT_KING What more can I say about him?
I've been busy for a while, my friend Michel Legistre loose a part of his collection and asked me some help for his blog (http://www.grooveaddict.org/) The last 10 pages are from my collection (+ or -) Take a look. Don't forget I'm French so excuse my poor English.
More importantly, Lonnie, T-Bone, Charlie, Blind Boy and other superior guitarists are forgotten while their later pale, simplified imitation, Robert Johnson, is lauded as some sort of god mostly because of the circumstances his recordings were discovered under, and the promotion of John Hammond and some collectors/compilers who prized Johnson mostly for his rarity.
I agree, Le Roi. I often think that Robert Johnson's death at a young age and all the supernatural tales about how he acquired his guitar playing were more important than his music to Hammond and other young whites in the 1960s who only valued stereotypes, blues men as mysterious troubadours living precarious lives always on the edge. For suburban affluent white kids, Johnson had an appeal that was similar to that of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road." One could speculate and fantasize about a life that was allegedly different, more intriguing, and full of wanderlust. The facts that Johnson died just as he was trying to develop his own style or that Kerouac's book was published when he was a 39-year old alcoholic and not a youthful vagabond, in other words, a touch of reality, seems not to have dissuaded a privileged, often college-educated, audience from wistfully imposing its own longings and mythology on both. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Johnson greatly but you are right, superior guitarists were ignored when Johnson was appointed king by Hammond. And if one wants to be haunted by the actual blues as an eery, otherworldly experience, and not apocryphal stories of midnight rendezvouses at crossroads, Skip James is my man.
I've just got to say - That when I first heard Robert Johnson ...I couldn't believe how good he was ---and I think he deserves all the praise he gets ..and more He was one of the most able players ever to play acoustic blues - And could play in many styles ...compare the different way he plays the same song with different takes...I know he gets more than his fair share of publicity compared to other bluesmen from the classic era but I believe he was the pinnacle of country blues and to this day (after 40 years of listening to him) I still think he's magical !!! BTW has anyone checked Google images to see another photographic discovery of RJ ( and possibly another?) Cheers
...And thanks KC and FOB for getting my goat !!! You may have guessed I'm A HUGE Robert Johnson fan - And will run to his defence when I see him criticized He's my home team ! I have listened to most of the great bluesmen for most of my life (especially guitarists) and love many others, including all those mentioned by KC, but he was unique and to me something extra special - I think his remarkable technique ( he could sound like 2 guitarists) is due to his unusually large finger lengths ( See the known photographs) So I have to disagree with my 2 friends above re his inferiority - To me he is one of the Gods of the Blues And let's face it ...these sort of debates are what this blog is all about ! ...Or should be if more were to partake ! Cheers yet again
He. he, he (giggle, giggle), Gus wait until Unky Cliff weighs in on this one! Maybe I should just go ahead and post the Complete R.J. and get HIM to write the presentation - I like him more than Cliff does, it is just that I see him as the culmination of a style rather than an innovator, he didn't write half the songs attributed to him and his guitar is a distillation of Johnson and Jefferson, a simplified codification that is now the norm because people can actually play his licks.
Well, I hope that Unky Cliff brings it on. Robert Johnson has never been one of my absolute personal favorites, but I am in general agreement with Guitar Gus on his objective greatness in the blues. I used to get annoyed at how much attention Robert Johnson got relative to other great country blues artists. Now the pendulum seems to have swung in the other direction, with a lot of writers today trying to marginalize Johnson beyond what makes any sense to me. Sure, he took a lot from other blues musicians. That was the tradition. Everybody did that. But Johnson succeeded in crafting pretty extraordinary and fully realized songs that were still his own. He was adored and imitated by many other blues greats (Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Johnny Shines, Robert Lockwood, etc), and rightly so.
On a more specific note, I disagree that Robert Johnson's guitar style is just a distillation (or simplification) of Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Certainly, the influence of Lonnie Johnson is audible in a number of his songs. I don't hear much Blind Lemon Jefferson in Robert Johnson, although Jefferson's influence all through the South was quite ubiquitous, and I am sure that it would be possible to find at least indirect influences in that respect. But Robert Johnson's guitar style very much embodied the Mississippi Delta and the traditions of Son House, Charlie Patton and the like. Furthermore, I would argue that his guitar style was often indeed innovative. In particular, did the kind of dynamic riffing and rhythmic accents that went into songs like Terraplane Blues have any precedent? Son House and (maybe) Kokomo Arnold may have been inspirations. But the result was all RJ. Few other blues artists have been able to recreate that special rhythmic feeling, Johnny Shines being a notable exception who could even generate it in a band setting. Even though Terraplane Blues was the most popular Robert Johnson song, few dared to try to cover it, and there is a good reason for that. Cross Road Blues uses a similar rhythmic pattern, which is completely destroyed in Eric Clapton's version and other covers of the song.
I don't think Johnson's style is simply a distillation and I love him as much as the next person and have all of his recordings, as well as several biographies; however, he was just beginning as a blues musician, hadn't achieved widespread fame or significant recording success or popularity among blues audiences, and yet his mythology has eclipsed recognition of other great blues artists of the era. The question I raised is why he became anointed early on as the king by a young white, rather than black, audience and I think the whole devil at the crossroads/dying in one's youth's under murky circumstances/rootless blues vagabond fascination is what made so many young white kids listen to him in the early 1960s. John Lee Hooker, Booker White, and Big Bill Broonzy all realized the appeal that being rustic and rural had for their young white audiences. Lonnie Johnson's and Leroy Carr's music was too sophisticated to garner that early revival audience and it's a shame.
Since I began listening to the blues as a kid, I have tried to expand my appreciation of all the greats and I know too many who think Robert Johnson was the supreme incarnation of the blues man and stopped there never bothering to listen to Skip James, Charlie Patton, or any of the early geniuses of the genre, or, more importantly, those artists who did not live long enough to benefit from being rediscovered and the revival. I'm not discussing the uniqueness of Johnson's music although he had his antecedents but he was not the sole unknown great of the times and was anointed as the king by Hammond and others at the expense of Charley Patton and others. For that matter, I have everything Kerouac wrote, have read his biographies, and knew his home town well, but, as with Che, Robert Johnson, Bob Marley, and others who became greater as icons in death, I find from my limited vantage point that romanticism obscures the reality and creates legends that deter focus from the actual accomplishments. Then again I having trouble with B. B. King being regarded as the king of the blues or Marley as the apotheosis of reggae at the expense of other greats. Who gets to anoint and using what criteria? If Marley was a legend in 1982 after his death and more commercial recordings, why wasn't he in 1973 or 1974 to so many when he was alive? I am weary of seeing his face on tee shirts and not hearing his music played ion radio. Then again, we sometimes impose a competition and exalt some to the exclusion of other greats. Preslives articulates the point much better than I when he writes about the pendulum which either sanctifies Johnson or dismisses him, neither doing him much justice as an artist trying to practice his craft. However, with respect to covering Terraplane Blues, I think caution is in order because so much wasn't recorded or reflected the tastes of the producers and studios and their perceptions of what the public wanted . I have heard other contemporary versions even though I think Johnson's was the best. I guess I lack gods in so many areas of my life. For example, as great as Clapton was, I can't imagine Derek and the Dominoes without Duane Allman so I regarded the ubiquitous Clapton Is God of my youth as seriously as I regarded Frodo Lives. Sorry to have gotten your goat, Gus, I'd reimburse with a bull or two but the shipping costs to England are too steep for my budget and then there's that Mad Cow disease worry, too.
Hey it's just great to have such a debate here as should happen frequently - I don't want to go on about RJ too much but I think Pres put it rather well above - As to why certain artists become icons and others don't - I just think it's 1) They have a remarkable talent above their peers 2) They are immediately distinguishable and likeable etc etc With regards to who ripped off who - That my friends (as we all know is the story of music !) No one slags J S Bach for his Vivaldi influences (which were great)... And Blues to R&B to Soul etc is just the evolution of music per se - ( Shame it seems to has regressed lately) Anyway .....What's the next subject for analysis profs ? Individual opinions are what makes communication interesting and adds to our outlook so keep things going guys ! Cheers
I think that circumstances, at times, help - how to put it - get the names circulated and circulated and circulated. Perfect example, over here in the States we had the so called British Blues Invasion. I never really got all taken with it because, like most of us reading this blog, I was familiar with at least 2 of the 3 Kings - knew who Howlin' Wolf was and will leave it at that. I also had a laugh when I read about the music momma wouldn't want to take home, not the exact quote, and know the feeling....I knew these songs - had some idea, when first started listening to them, and also had an idea that it wasn't something that should bring up around the house.....didn't know what it was but liked how it sounded and found out much more a few years later!!!
The Bobbin and King singles may not be quite the equal of the subsequent Stax recordings, but they sure don't suck!
27 comments:
http://www.embedupload.com/?d=8YYAGDZWGT
While I love the Stax stuff, sometimes these earlier recordings are preferable to me, because they are slightly "rougher/dirtier" in the mix.
i have to agree with you, pmac, about the "rougher" mix and having this one (thanks for that) adds to the whole for me
Having grown up on NO 50s-60s r&b/soul, I have always had an affinity for the music that you wouldn't take home to momma. ;-)
I also agree with pmac. These recordings are timeless and stand on their own quite well. No comparisons with the Stax sides are necessary. This was Albert coming into his own with HIS sound on HIS terms.
NEVER heard these!
This stuff was largely disregarded as another B.B. clone for a long time, but the passage of time has made that connection less of an issue as both guys developed into different players - I'd say the Stax songs were better but the raw edge here has it's appeal.
Aaah my dear FO'B, you always warm my heart with you generous sharing of YOUR experience with Musicholism and the wonders of new musical revelations - you remind me that perhaps I too should do a little more personal writing and sharing here -- perhaps the answer to a more fulfilling experience for moi is to slow down and spend more time on the post crafting, thus creating more distance between posts and time for response - I've been more like a daily columnist than a weekly or bi weekly magazine
Nice post KC - I do possess this CD (and most of the other AK discs available) and love his style and vocals - Not a flashy guitar sound but hits the soulful spot and is unmistakable
Thanks for posting this. I love all three kings but there is something about Albert the giant and the joy he expressed when playing and singing that makes him my favorite even if he was not the best when compared with Riley B. I have never seen a photograph of him not smiling or entranced by the music he was playing. I didn't have the pleasure of seeing him live but I'll never forgot his PBS concert with Stevie Ray Vaughan which was a mixture of passing the torch, encouraging an adoring and earnest student, and playing so naturally that he made it look effortless, as if he had been born with a guitar in his hands. His posthumous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame pays no small homage to his influence. I never regarded Albert King as a clone of B. B. because I thought his style of playing quite different but this pre-Stax material allows me to see how he developed. I don't think B. B. viewed it that way either. After all, he once said "Albert wasn't my brother in blood, but he was my brother in blues." Then again it sometimes seems to me that almost every modern blues guitarist is regarded as emulating B. B. King in one way or another and T-Bone Walker's and Lonnie Johnson's influences go unmentioned.
As usual my comment will be... a link to an ALBERT KING folder with 7 original albums: http://www.mediafire.com/folder/rd65uhr715e63/ALBERT_KING
What more can I say about him?
I've been busy for a while, my friend Michel Legistre loose a part of his collection and asked me some help for his blog (http://www.grooveaddict.org/) The last 10 pages are from my collection (+ or -) Take a look. Don't forget I'm French so excuse my poor English.
Pat- the website addy doesn't appear to work. Regardless, many thanks for the Albert King motherload.
I tried three times from the comment - all were successfull
Just tried again - it worked. Never should try linking before I finish my first cup of coffee. Thanks!
More importantly, Lonnie, T-Bone, Charlie, Blind Boy and other superior guitarists are forgotten while their later pale, simplified imitation, Robert Johnson, is lauded as some sort of god mostly because of the circumstances his recordings were discovered under, and the promotion of John Hammond and some collectors/compilers who prized Johnson mostly for his rarity.
Thanks KC (and patsoul) - great stuff.
I agree, Le Roi. I often think that Robert Johnson's death at a young age and all the supernatural tales about how he acquired his guitar playing were more important than his music to Hammond and other young whites in the 1960s who only valued stereotypes, blues men as mysterious troubadours living precarious lives always on the edge. For suburban affluent white kids, Johnson had an appeal that was similar to that of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road." One could speculate and fantasize about a life that was allegedly different, more intriguing, and full of wanderlust. The facts that Johnson died just as he was trying to develop his own style or that Kerouac's book was published when he was a 39-year old alcoholic and not a youthful vagabond, in other words, a touch of reality, seems not to have dissuaded a privileged, often college-educated, audience from wistfully imposing its own longings and mythology on both. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Johnson greatly but you are right, superior guitarists were ignored when Johnson was appointed king by Hammond. And if one wants to be haunted by the actual blues as an eery, otherworldly experience, and not apocryphal stories of midnight rendezvouses at crossroads, Skip James is my man.
I've just got to say - That when I first heard Robert Johnson ...I couldn't believe how good he was ---and I think he deserves all the praise he gets ..and more
He was one of the most able players ever to play acoustic blues - And could play in many styles ...compare the different way he plays the same song with different takes...I know he gets more than his fair share of publicity compared to other bluesmen from the classic era but I believe he was the pinnacle of country blues and to this day (after 40 years of listening to him) I still think he's magical !!!
BTW has anyone checked Google images to see another photographic discovery of RJ ( and possibly another?)
Cheers
...And thanks KC and FOB for getting my goat !!! You may have guessed I'm A HUGE Robert Johnson fan - And will run to his defence when I see him criticized
He's my home team ! I have listened to most of the great bluesmen for most of my life (especially guitarists) and love many others, including all those mentioned by KC, but he was unique and to me something extra special - I think his remarkable technique ( he could sound like 2 guitarists) is due to his unusually large finger lengths ( See the known photographs) So I have to disagree with my 2 friends above re his inferiority - To me he is one of the Gods of the Blues
And let's face it ...these sort of debates are what this blog is all about ! ...Or should be if more were to partake !
Cheers yet again
He. he, he (giggle, giggle), Gus wait until Unky Cliff weighs in on this one! Maybe I should just go ahead and post the Complete R.J. and get HIM to write the presentation - I like him more than Cliff does, it is just that I see him as the culmination of a style rather than an innovator, he didn't write half the songs attributed to him and his guitar is a distillation of Johnson and Jefferson, a simplified codification that is now the norm because people can actually play his licks.
Well, I hope that Unky Cliff brings it on. Robert Johnson has never been one of my absolute personal favorites, but I am in general agreement with Guitar Gus on his objective greatness in the blues. I used to get annoyed at how much attention Robert Johnson got relative to other great country blues artists. Now the pendulum seems to have swung in the other direction, with a lot of writers today trying to marginalize Johnson beyond what makes any sense to me. Sure, he took a lot from other blues musicians. That was the tradition. Everybody did that. But Johnson succeeded in crafting pretty extraordinary and fully realized songs that were still his own. He was adored and imitated by many other blues greats (Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Johnny Shines, Robert Lockwood, etc), and rightly so.
On a more specific note, I disagree that Robert Johnson's guitar style is just a distillation (or simplification) of Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Certainly, the influence of Lonnie Johnson is audible in a number of his songs. I don't hear much Blind Lemon Jefferson in Robert Johnson, although Jefferson's influence all through the South was quite ubiquitous, and I am sure that it would be possible to find at least indirect influences in that respect. But Robert Johnson's guitar style very much embodied the Mississippi Delta and the traditions of Son House, Charlie Patton and the like. Furthermore, I would argue that his guitar style was often indeed innovative. In particular, did the kind of dynamic riffing and rhythmic accents that went into songs like Terraplane Blues have any precedent? Son House and (maybe) Kokomo Arnold may have been inspirations. But the result was all RJ. Few other blues artists have been able to recreate that special rhythmic feeling, Johnny Shines being a notable exception who could even generate it in a band setting. Even though Terraplane Blues was the most popular Robert Johnson song, few dared to try to cover it, and there is a good reason for that. Cross Road Blues uses a similar rhythmic pattern, which is completely destroyed in Eric Clapton's version and other covers of the song.
I don't think Johnson's style is simply a distillation and I love him as much as the next person and have all of his recordings, as well as several biographies; however, he was just beginning as a blues musician, hadn't achieved widespread fame or significant recording success or popularity among blues audiences, and yet his mythology has eclipsed recognition of other great blues artists of the era. The question I raised is why he became anointed early on as the king by a young white, rather than black, audience and I think the whole devil at the crossroads/dying in one's youth's under murky circumstances/rootless blues vagabond fascination is what made so many young white kids listen to him in the early 1960s. John Lee Hooker, Booker White, and Big Bill Broonzy all realized the appeal that being rustic and rural had for their young white audiences. Lonnie Johnson's and Leroy Carr's music was too sophisticated to garner that early revival audience and it's a shame.
Since I began listening to the blues as a kid, I have tried to expand my appreciation of all the greats and I know too many who think Robert Johnson was the supreme incarnation of the blues man and stopped there never bothering to listen to Skip James, Charlie Patton, or any of the early geniuses of the genre, or, more importantly, those artists who did not live long enough to benefit from being rediscovered and the revival. I'm not discussing the uniqueness of Johnson's music although he had his antecedents but he was not the sole unknown great of the times and was anointed as the king by Hammond and others at the expense of Charley Patton and others. For that matter, I have everything Kerouac wrote, have read his biographies, and knew his home town well, but, as with Che, Robert Johnson, Bob Marley, and others who became greater as icons in death, I find from my limited vantage point that romanticism obscures the reality and creates legends that deter focus from the actual accomplishments. Then again I having trouble with B. B. King being regarded as the king of the blues or Marley as the apotheosis of reggae at the expense of other greats. Who gets to anoint and using what criteria? If Marley was a legend in 1982 after his death and more commercial recordings, why wasn't he in 1973 or 1974 to so many when he was alive? I am weary of seeing his face on tee shirts and not hearing his music played ion radio. Then again, we sometimes impose a competition and exalt some to the exclusion of other greats. Preslives articulates the point much better than I when he writes about the pendulum which either sanctifies Johnson or dismisses him, neither doing him much justice as an artist trying to practice his craft. However, with respect to covering Terraplane Blues, I think caution is in order because so much wasn't recorded or reflected the tastes of the producers and studios and their perceptions of what the public wanted . I have heard other contemporary versions even though I think Johnson's was the best. I guess I lack gods in so many areas of my life. For example, as great as Clapton was, I can't imagine Derek and the Dominoes without Duane Allman so I regarded the ubiquitous Clapton Is God of my youth as seriously as I regarded Frodo Lives. Sorry to have gotten your goat, Gus, I'd reimburse with a bull or two but the shipping costs to England are too steep for my budget and then there's that Mad Cow disease worry, too.
Hey it's just great to have such a debate here as should happen frequently - I don't want to go on about RJ too much but I think Pres put it rather well above - As to why certain artists become icons and others don't - I just think it's 1) They have a remarkable talent above their peers 2) They are immediately distinguishable and likeable etc etc
With regards to who ripped off who - That my friends (as we all know is the story of music !) No one slags J S Bach for his Vivaldi influences (which were great)... And Blues to R&B to Soul etc is just the evolution of music per se - ( Shame it seems to has regressed lately)
Anyway .....What's the next subject for analysis profs ? Individual opinions are what makes communication interesting and adds to our outlook so keep things going guys !
Cheers
I think that circumstances, at times, help - how to put it - get the names circulated and circulated and circulated. Perfect example, over here in the States we had the so called British Blues Invasion. I never really got all taken with it because, like most of us reading this blog, I was familiar with at least 2 of the 3 Kings - knew who Howlin' Wolf was and will leave it at that. I also had a laugh when I read about the music momma wouldn't want to take home, not the exact quote, and know the feeling....I knew these songs - had some idea, when first started listening to them, and also had an idea that it wasn't something that should bring up around the house.....didn't know what it was but liked how it sounded and found out much more a few years later!!!
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