Freddy King performs in Battersea, South London, 1967

[Alan Balfour]

In the course of looking for something else I chanced upon the following which might find interest with one or two folk here.
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FREDDY KING
David Illingworth
Jazz Journal, November 1967 (p. 17-18, less pics)

Freddy King is a revered name amongst enthusiasts of the B. B. King manner (he is no relation to the Blues Boy, but says 'all us Kings are Blues Brothers!'). He first came into prominence with his recordings made for the Federal/King label in 1960/61—a lone Parlophone single I Love The Woman issued here introduced many to one of a few singer/guitarists who were using the B. B. King manner as a basis for personal blues interpretation Frankly, his voice and guitar-playing have a more urgent quality than B.B.'s, and he has a deeper range vocally. As Buddy Guy has reached his own guitar style via tonal variation and some jazz-like phrasing, Freddy has distilled the B.B. King manner to the very essence of the blues by economy and a drier, less resonant amplified sound. (He can play fast too when he wants)

The atmosphere in the Blue Horizon Club, Nag's Head, Battersea, on the second night of King's (terribly unpublicised) two-week tour in October, proved what has been said all along about the British venues for bluesmen. If Otis Rush's reputation was tarnished some what unfortunately by the frigid Royal Albert Hall last October, Freddy King could not have gone far wrong in Battersea, even if he had only played half as well. He gave about an hour's performance; the medium and fast instrumentals (Hideaway, San-Ho-Zay, Funny Bone, Sensation), standards of rhythm-and-blues guitar playing, on which it was stimulating to see that Freddy was often building solos which varied consider ably from the original recordings. And of course the vocals: See See Baby, l Love The Woman, I'm Tore Down, Have You Ever Loved A Woman, It’s Too Bad Things Are Going So Tough, a very respectful and moving performance of Lowell Fulson's Reconsider Baby, and the hit of the evening Love With A Feeling: 'The cops took her in, the woman didn't need no bail; she wiggle all the time for the judge, and the judge put the cops in jail.' As so many of Freddy's Federal singles are subject to annoying fade-out endings, it was gratifying to note ample guitar solo space on the slow numbers. The audience was beautiful, responding like they were Chicagoans born and bred, visibly and audibly moved. The local accompanying group, the Chicken Shack, played very well: Stan Webb (guitar), Christine Perfect (piano), Andy Silvester (bass) and Al Sykes (drums). They held themselves in check beautifully, and the normally fierce drumming of Houston-born Sykes was toned down to become blues drumming of a high order. Webb, incidentally is a good lead blues guitarist in his own right. It is unfortunate that only one record by King is currently avail able here, the Sue single WI-349 featuring the instrumentals Hideaway and Driving Sideways. But it's vocals we really want, and it is to be hoped that Polydor (who have rights to the King catalogue) may very soon remedy this. preferably in album form. Make no mistake, Freddy King is one of the best of the younger blues artists, and certainly the most exciting to visit Britain for a long time. He is deeply involved in his music, as the following interview may show. (He also confused the discographical issue some more, by claiming to play lead guitar on Howling Wolf's Spoonful and Howlin' For My Darling with Hubert Sumlin on second guitar—over to you 'Blues Unlimited'!).

'I was born in 1934, Gilmer, Texas, and raised in Chicago. First blues I heard, really paid attention to, was Blind Lemon My grandmother had a lot of old records there and she would play them. Blind Lemon, and the name was One Dime Blues: 'I'm broke, I ain't got a dime' I was about five or six, 'cause I started playing guitar when I was six years old. My mother played. She played blues, man, and western; then my uncle, he was really the one that taught me, Leon King. He got killed in a car accident in '44. Before I started playing in a band—I was too young to go into night clubs, but I was weighing about, oh, 275 or something like that!—sixteen years old. And I used to slip around Muddy Waters in the night-club; he wouldn't say any thing, he'd just let me come on in. The band was Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Elgin (drums) and Jimmy Rogers—I used to sit there all night and look at 'em. So finally one night they asked me to come up and play one. I was playing Muddy Waters style—it was about '55 when Lonesome Jimmy Lee and I formed a band together, with Sonny Scott playing drums, and I really started to play the way I do now'.

'The first club I played in professionally (I was about seventeen), I was playing Red's Playmore, that's on Madison Street in Chicago, with just myself, and a guy named Charles on guitar, and guy on harmonica by the name of 'J.T.', and Sonny Scott. Then I moved on down the street to be in a band at the Kitty-Kat Club; played with Little Sonny and his band about six to eight months, and then I went with another band Payton and his Blues Cats. Four of us—Payton he blew harmonica, Robert Elam on the bass, and there was T. J. McNulty on drums. While I was playing with them I had two or three out-of-town dates with Memphis Slim. '

'The Little Sonny I p1ayed with was not the one in Detroit—I didn't meet that one till '61. 'After I left Payton I formed my own band, with 'T.J.', Robert Elam, and a guy on saxophone named Abe Locke. On the Federal records later, there was a guy named Phillip Paul on drums, my brother Benny Turner played bass on some of the songs. Then Bill Willis is on some, and Gene Redd on tenor saxophone. Thc sax solo on See See Baby that was a guy they called 'Pot', he's also played with Hank Ballard. 'The bass-player on I Love The Woman was Bill Willis. And of course Sonny Thompson was on piano.'

'Both my brothers now have bands in Chicago, Benny, and Bobby Turner; pretty close to Muddy Waters' way. '

'I did some recording, backing others on Chess and King. Funny thing, about four or five months ago the fighter Curtis Coakes, they were going to make a recording of him. Well, they didn't know if he can sing or not, which he can't!—but they called me to play the guitar behind him. I tell him 'Stick to your fighting!' —you know we had a lot of laughs out of it! '

'The band I got now is: Marvin 'Sleepy' Clements (tenor), I. V. Anderson (trumpet), Robert Whitelaw (drums), R. C. Johnson and Phineas Tasbv (bass). Then I have a female vocalist Little Mary, she sings Aretha Franklin and Mary Love songs, and a male vocalist Little Gene sings James Brown, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. Then when I come on I sing the blues! I tour a lot too with Johnny Taylor (not Little Johnny Taylor) he's a very popular blues singer.'

'Yes, I would say T-Bone Walker was the daddy of this guitar style He started playing down the neck of the guitar—he brought the whole thing in. Clarence Brown—I do a lot of TV shows with him. We have a show going now called 'The Beat'—he's the band director, and plays guitar and violin. He was better than that Bo Diddley (Clock Strikes Twelve), he can really play that thing—he makes it go like I play my guitar. Johnny 'Guitar' Watson? Oh yes, I met him in California—we all had a big party at Ike Turner's house for me, Sam Cooke, Johnny, Eugene Church, Ike & Tina. That was the same year Sam Cooke got killed. They had a little band there by a blind guy by the name of Mac Neal, used to sing in my band in Chicago. He used to have a whole band, all the guys were blind but one, the bass-player Shuffle Brown. They were really tough. 'I haven't seen Smokey Smothers for about six years. He's about 32 or 33. When I was playing on those records they wanted me to play mostly his style, so I played sort of Muddy Waters style.'

'Sonny Thompson is the best blues piano player I heard in my life. I'm not saying it because he's my manager! He's been playing on my records for years, but he's just my manager now and doesn't play. But he's the best, along with Otis Spann, and the late Johnny Jones who played with Elmore James and Magic Sam. Johnny and his wife lived right next to us for about five years—we practised about every other day ! He wasn't even forty when he died. He helped me write Love With A Feeling.'

'You mention Hound Dog Taylor—now that's really where Hideaway came from. He played with that thing on his finger—and he was playing in a little club, he would play a little bit and he'd run down the neck. I'd sit down and listen to him and gradually this Hideaway came in my mind from his phrases.'

'Ko Ko Taylor Yes, she's on that 'Beat' TV show. The last really blues female before her that I knew in Chicago was Tiny Topsy (about 1957) and Lil Mason, who used to sing in my band. That was when Harold Burrage was on the same show; he's passed too of course. An other guy who was with me as my chauffeur in '61/'63 is now one of the top soul singers in Chicago—Tyrone they call him Some people might say the blues is dying; they make like two or three different types of records, you know—but you turn it right back around, and it's the same thing! Blues. I lives in Dallas; I played there about three weeks ago: Friday night I had about 700, Saturday night about 900, Sunday night about 600, so you know we don't do bad. Maybe the blues is different, but it still is blues. I mean, the Wolf sells them all the time!'

[John Crosby]

Funnily enough, I remember seeing Freddy King on a UK tour sometime in the late '60s. If memory serves me right it was supporting Duane Eddy, of all people, at a gig in Hull's Skyline lounge (a dance hall, now long gone, situated on the upper floor of the multi-storey Cooperative Store in the town centre). I say, if memory serves me right, because in those days nights out were fuelled by drink, substances and women so it all becomes rather hazy at times.

Freddy was such a fantastic guitarist and a mean singer too. I bought the several video tapes of him that came out via Stefan Grossman on Shanachie (don't know if they made it to DVD? Alan?!). Apart from one mid-'60s show, most of this video stuff came from the early '70s and featured Freddy in blisteringly wonderful form.

His attire on the later stuff is a perfect model for anyone who wants to go today to a Seventies fancy dress party and get it right. Huge shirt and jacket lapels (big enough to make a new suit from each one of them), garish clashes of primal dyes and flares sufficently wide enough to construct a tent!

[Alan Balfour]

Funnily enough, I remember seeing Freddy King on a UK tour sometime in the late '60s.

That was probably March 1969. On the last night of that tour King recalled for Max Jones his previous visit, "The audience was great last time, but there wasn't any record out and not much press. This year I had my Atlantic single and, of course, the Melody Maker was very kind to me. But I've always found the reaction good. Every night on the first tour was a packed house."

[Adam Blake]

.His attire on the later stuff is a perfect model for anyone who wants to go today to a Seventies fancy dress party and get it right. Huge shirt and jacket lapels (big enough to make a new suit from each one of them), garish clashes of primal dyes and flares sufficently wide enough to construct a tent!

Dare I say it, you have to be black to get away with clothes like that. But, er, don't let me put anyone off...

You lucky man, I never got to see Freddie. It was good to see Peter Green ruminating over a cd re-issue of the second Fleetwood Mac album on that recent documentary. He smiled and said he was trying to do Freddie King on it and that it was OK if you liked that sort of thing but not as good as the original. Lovely impish smile on his face.

[John Crosby]

You lucky man, I never got to see Freddie. It was good to see Peter Green ruminating over a cd re-issue of the second Fleetwood Mac album on that recent documentary. He smiled and said he was trying to do Freddie King on it and that it was OK if you liked that sort of thing but not as good as the original. Lovely impish smile on his face.

Freddie was such an inventive guitarist and, like Lonnie Johnson in the pre-WW2 years, was highly creative within what should be a limited musical form. Peter has absorbed influences from him but also, of course, from Hank Marvin. I think the latter was very influential on the eeire tonality of many of Peter's instrumentals.

I do consider myself very lucky that between the ages of 15 and 21 (1965-71), I had the opportunity to catch 'in their prime' performances by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar & Alla Rakha, T-Bone Walker, Chuck Berry, Bert Jansch, Michael Chapman, The Watersons, Hedy West, Rev Gary Davis, Johnny Shines, Tim Rose, Donovan (with Harold McNair), Jimmy Smith, Roland Kirk, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed and The Mike Westbrook Big Band (the one on 'Marching Song 1 & 2') to name just a few. It was a wonderful introduction to a lifetime of keeping one's ears open to both the old and the new.

[NormanD]

Going back to the clothes, this photo accompanied a review of a 1972 Freddy King show in Belgium (courtesy of Alan Balfour).

It wasn't just Nashville that had all the fancy costumes.

[will vine]

As so many of Freddy's Federal singles are subject to annoying fade-out endings, it was gratifying to note ample guitar solo space on the slow numbers. The audience was beautiful, responding like they were Chicagoans born and bred, visibly and audibly moved. The local accompanying group, the Chicken Shack, played very well: Stan Webb (guitar), Christine Perfect (piano), Andy Silvester (bass) and Al Sykes (drums). They held themselves in check beautifully, and the
normally fierce drumming of Houston-born Sykes was toned down to become blues drumming of a high order. Webb, incidentally is a good lead blues guitarist in his own right.

Probably the first time since 1967 that I've heard anything complimentary about Chicken Shack. I guess it was that as an exciting live act they were amongst my first loves that I still have a great affection for their first two albums. I don't have any "Can the white man sing the blues?" qualms about them, and I think the playing is great, the Freddy King knock-offs are great, Christine Perfect had a good voice, and much of the material stands up. In the recent British Blues programme alluded to elsewhere on this site they were not heavily featured except uncredited in the soundtrack. I don't know if they're available on Spotify but you might try for When The Train Comes Back, Mean Old World, King of the World (for the feel if not the singing), San Ho Zay, A Woman is the Blues.
A legendary impromptu jam at, I think, The Speakeasy is mentioned somewhere which is said to have inclded Howlin Wolf, Stan Webb, Christine Perfect, and Stevie Wonder on drums...... Alan?

[illingwg]

Dave Illingworth, who wrote the review on Freddy King for Jazz Journal way back in November 1967 is my father. Lovely to read some of his work (this was written a month before I was born). Dave's still alive and well and living in London. He is still very enthuiastic about his music and gigs regularly all over the UK.

[Alan Balfour]

Dave Illingworth, who wrote the review on Freddy King for Jazz Journal way back in November 1967 is my father. Lovely to read some of his work (this was written a month before I was born). Dave's still alive and well and living in London. He is still very enthuiastic about his music and gigs regularly all over the UK.

I've got lots more like that, as I'm sure your dad has. Something in the back of my mind tells me that he used to play in a skiffle group way back when. Good to hear he keeps on keeping on.

[Chris Williams]

Can anyone out there tell me when Freddy King played at Kirklevington Country Club just outside Yarm on Teesside in 1968 I think. Also who supported him?

I was there and I'm sure that Free were on first and Freddy was backed by Steamhammer??

But then again it was a long time ago!

Thanks

Chris

[Alan Balfour]

I've so far been unable to locate a 1968 tour but he was definitely in UK during June 1969 on a "nationwide tour". I'll dig though my box of "cuttings" from the period and see if anything surfaces.

I seem to remember that the King family created a FK website which might be worth investigating.

[Alan Balfour]

He was also in UK March 1969 and the Melody Maker reported on the gig at Bluesville, Finsbury Park. The show was opened by Steamhammer and for his set King was accompanied by Steamhammer less Martin Pugh and Kieran White (vocalist and guitarist?). MM's Max Jones reported that being the first gig of the tour the accompanists "had to be directed by signs, mainly-head pointing, due to one very short run through prior to the show. I don't doubt by the time this is in print the whole act will be tighter and slicker". But other than that he was praiseworthy.

Now all that remains is for Chris's question to be answered.

[Chris Williams]

Thanks Alan. It could have been early 69 but not after Nov that year as that's when I left Redcar to go to work in London and I never went back!

[davidt]

On the Killing Floor website they mention supporting Freddie backed by Steamhammer on a previous tour. Previous to 1969 that is, when Killing Floor backed Freddie.

http://www.marshalamp.com/kffreddieking1024.htm

I don't remember much about Steamhammer except I did see them at the Plumpton Jazz and Blues festival in 1970 on a night headlined by Family.

David