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224 Part IV: Sounding Like the Masters: Blues Styles through the Ages Four Blues Giants: Three Kings
and a Collins
Beyond the important regions, cultural developments, and trends in blues,
individual performers often launch a trend in music. You’d be hard pressed to
find any single more influential individual than the four giants of blues guitar
covered in the following sections.
Albert King, the upside-down
string bender
Mississippi-born, Arkansas-raised Albert King was a big man who squeezed
the strings of his guitar into heartfelt submission. Because he played lefthanded,
upside-down guitar (where the low E string was closest to the floor),
Albert’s style was unorthodox, especially his approach to bending strings. He
pulled the strings of his signature Gibson Flying V down toward the floor,
which in part accounted for his unusual, expressive sound.
Figure 12-7 shows a passage that captures Albert’s unique string-bending
approach and phrasing.
When Albert King was living in St. Louis in the late 1950s and then Memphis,
he recorded for Stax Records and enjoyed real success, gaining visibility in
both the blues and rock arenas. His soulful sound and R&B arrangements
produced his best known songs of the era, including “Laundromat Blues,”
“Cross Cut Saw,” and “Born Under a Bad Sign,” all of which placed on the
pop charts. Albert King influenced many blues and blues-rock guitarists
including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, Stevie Ray Vaughan,
and Robert Cray.
If you’re right-handed and ever want to see “first hand” what it was really like
for Albert King and Otis Rush to play guitar, go into a music store and ask to
see a left-handed guitar. Hold it “righty-style” with the fretboard in your left
hand, and you’ll see the low E string is closest to the floor. Then try to play
some familiar chords and licks. If you don’t get freaked out, or at least a little
disoriented by this, either you’re an ambidextrous genius, or you’re not really
trying!
TEAM LinG
B.B. King, the blues’ king of kings
If you know only one name in the blues, it’s probably B.B. King. B.B. is the
rightly anointed, undisputed king of the blues, and he has a deep historical