Review: Freddie King - Freddy King Sings (1961)
Tracks: 1) See See Baby; 2) Lonesome Whistle Blues; 3) Takin’ Care Of Business; 4) Have You Ever Loved A Woman; 5) You Know That You Love Me (But You Never Tell Me So); 6) I’m Tore Down; 7) I Love The Woman; 8) Let Me Be (Stay Away From Me); 9) It’s Too Bad That Things Are Going So Tough; 10) You’ve Got To Love Her With A Feeling; 11) If You Believe (In What You Do); 12) You Mean, Mean Woman (How Can Your Love Be True).
REVIEW
Not only was Freddie King the youngest of the three Kings of the blues world (Albert King, born 1923; B. B. King, born 1925; Freddie, born 1934, a bare four months prior to Elvis), but he also squarely missed the chance to become a «Fifties star» — legend has it that Chess Records refused to sign him because he apparently sounded too much like B. B. King, and the blues roster of Chess was sort of like an «anti-B. B. King» thing in that decade. In fact, Freddie’s only preserved recorded output from the Fifties is a forgotten single put out on the short-lived El-Bee Records label in 1957 — two songs on which he does not even play lead guitar (Robert Lockwood Jr., a famous Chicago session player, is in charge of that job), just sings; neither ‘Country Boy’ nor ‘That’s What You Think’ sound a lot like B. B. King, though — young Freddy had a far more gritty, rustic vibe to him that actually had more in common with the big jump-blues performers of the 1940s, like Wynonie Harris or Big Joe Turner, than with the pompous blues-de-luxe style of the other King.
Ironically, something similar would happen to Albert King as well, who, despite being the oldest of the three, struggled to get a career going and did not catch much of a public eye until signing up with Stax in 1966 and releasing classics such as ‘Crosscut Saw’ and ‘Born Under A Bad Sign’ — which turned him into a Sixties’ guitar hero even if he’d been professionally playing blues guitar since at least the early Fifties. But in the end it turned out to be a good thing, simply because it was so much more rewarding to become a Sixties’ guitar hero than remain a Fifties’ one. With so many new open possibilities, such improved studio technologies, and — last but not least — such increased reverence from white audiences for the ancient art of the blues, the fact that both Freddie and Albert became «stars» so much later than B. B. did, I believe, contribute quite heavily to the «cooler» image of both (it would be difficult to argue that they are more popular than B. B. King, but they are definitely held in higher esteem by, let’s say, the average «audiences with discerning taste»).
That’s the demarcation line between Albert and Freddie, on one hand, and B. B. on the other. But there is also another, perhaps slightly less obvious demarcation line that pits Freddie against Albert and B. B. — besides age, there is also the fact that both of the latter came from the state of Mississippi, actually, both were good old country boys born on cotton plantations. Freddie King, however, was the product of urban Texas — born and raised in Dallas, then, at the age of 15, relocated with his family to Chicago, where he had to work in a steel mill for a while. Naturally, it’s not as simple as just setting up a contrast between «The Steel Mill Boy» and «The Cotton Field Boys», because both Albert and B. B. King, as soon as it was possible, «urbanized» themselves to the max — you don’t really hear either of them playing a whole lot of pick-a-bale-o’-cotton porch-style acoustic guitar on their records. But the difference still seeps in in subtle ways, what with Freddie, very likely, listening to much more R&B and rock’n’roll in his younger days, which could not help but color his personal style even when he was doing slow blues, let alone fast boogie.
Freddie’s debut single for King Records (no, the label was not made in his name) might, upon the first few listens, seem just like another generic slow electric blues number. There is nothing unusual about the basic melody of ‘Have You Ever Loved A Woman’, or about its main topic, or about its structure — verse one, verse two, guitar solo, verse three — but when I play it next to something very very similar by B. B. King, say, ‘Ten Long Years’, it becomes fairly obvious that there is a serious generational and cultural gap between the two performers. Unlike the blues performers of old — and quite like the rock and roll performers of the new — Freddie prefers to get right in your face rather than keep a respectful distance. The very first vocal line of the song, opening it before any other instruments come in, addresses you directly, and there’s an urgency and an intensity in both the artist’s singing and playing that takes the heat level up a notch compared to Freddie’s natural predecessor on the Texas blues scene, T-Bone Walker.
Interestingly, ‘Have You Ever Loved A Woman’, melodically no different from the likes of ‘Stormy Monday Blues’ and a gazillion other 12-bar tunes, is officially credited not to any professional bluesman, but to Billy Myles, a 1950s R&B and doo-wop artist whose usual specialty was writing love ballads (like his only own hit ‘The Joker’ from 1957). In fact, while the very subject of an unresolvable love triangle was no news for the blues genre, the actual lyrics — "Have you ever loved a woman / So much you tremble in pain? / All the time you know / She bears another man’s name" — were quite unusual for traditional blues, whose protagonists were rarely prone to trembling in pain and even more rarely appealed to their deeply hidden moral compass along the lines of "something deep inside you won’t let you wreck your best friend’s home". This is a kind of deep-soul blues that B. B. King himself would only learn to master years later: at the time, the only bona fide bluesman who specialized in similar material was probably Otis Rush (‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’ grips you emotionally along the same lines) — but even Otis’ sound was more introverted than Freddie’s.
Small wonder that a decade later, when it turned out that ‘Have You Ever Loved A Woman’ described the triangular situation between Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and Pattie Boyd to a tee, Derek & The Dominos made the song into a major highlight of the Layla album; it’s as if Myles and Freddie specially concocted it for those super-rare «romantically realistic» situations that almost never really crop up in true life, at least, not since pure romanticism went out of fashion in the mid-to-late 19th century. It helps, of course, that Freddie is every bit as expressive as a singer as he is as a guitar player: although, unlike B. B. King, he never tried intentionally modeling his image as that of Soul Brother #1, he had a great natural range and, when circumstances allowed, he always took it to the max. (Note that in 1960, circumstances did not yet quite allow to take it to the max — look for various live renditions of ‘Have You Ever Loved A Woman’ from the early 1970s to truly appreciate Freddie’s epic potential).
While it might be a bit of a stretch to insist that, with his early singles, Freddie more or less invented the «modern electric blues guitar» — let alone the fact that, whatever his innovative contributions might have been, their impact was severely diluted by their becoming so commonplace in blues music — it’s pretty clear that he was among the first generation of blues players who truly and verily fell in love with the sonic sheen of the Singular Electric Blues Lick. It’s easier to understand if you watch Freddie and B. B. King in live performance, one after another. B. B. King caresses his «Lucille» like a woman, extracting her undertones gently and softly; Freddie is the master of the lashing-out style, tearing at strings as if he were forcefully pinching his loved one’s nipple in some rough BDSM session — or, if that metaphor’s a little too crude for you, he’s just sticking knives into his very soul. Again, Otis Rush could do something like that, but his was a moody, confusing, and wildly unpolished style: Freddie, on the other hand, understood very well the power of clean, sharp production, and few people contributed more to the art of appreciating that sustained high-pitched electric tone as he did. No other American blues guitar player was more influential on Eric Clapton in his early days with the Yardbirds, John Mayall, and Cream — and thus, by extension, no American blues guitar player was more influential on the genesis of the British blues scene, period. Everybody loved B. B. King, for sure, but everybody wanted to play like Freddie.
Interestingly, though, for his first LP his label decided to slightly downplay the importance of his playing in favor of his singing — hence not just the title, but also the fact that the LP did not contain two of his most successful A-sides from 1961, ‘Hide Away’ and ‘San-Ho-Zay’, most likely because they were pure instrumentals (we shall return to them in the review of Freddie’s second album). This might have been done out of a vague fear that nobody would buy an electric guitar album just for the electric guitar (at least unless it was something party-like, like The Ventures) — but also out of admiration for Freddie’s capacity as a singer, which was at least as good as B. B. King’s own, and perhaps even better: there’s something about Freddie’s delivery that gives it a straight-from-the-heart feeling, while B. B. King’s approach is a tad more theatrical and a trifle more «calculated entertainment», with only occasional exceptions.
Admittedly, not a lot of those other songs hit as hard as ‘Have You Ever Loved A Woman’. At this point, Freddie has two preferred styles — the slow and soulful blues ballad and the mid-tempo straightforward blues rocker — and typically the songs within each of those are interchangeable, conjuring up the same moods and relying on largely the same sets of licks (there are a couple of sharply rising blues phrases that Freddie likes to insert into almost each and every solo he plays). Of the blues rocker variety, my unquestionable personal favorite is ‘I’m Tore Down’, tighter, catchier, tougher, and fiercer than any competition — the best thing about it is how it synthesizes those feelings of devotion, anger, and desperation, visible even in Sonny Thompson’s bare lyrics: "I love you baby with all my might / Love like mine is out of sight / I’ll lie for you if you want me to..." — then finishing the verse with the defiant logical non-sequitur of "I really don’t believe that your love is true!", not even bothering to preface it with a "but". Thirty-plus years later, Clapton would attempt a faithful cover of the original on his From The Cradle album, but while his own guitar playing on that recording is every bit Freddie’s equal, the vocal intensity of the original could not be matched.
The other blues rockers are a little underwhelming by comparison. ‘See See Baby’, a King/Thompson mash-up of ‘C. C. Rider’ and ‘Lawdy Mama’, gives a bit too much space to saxophones and pianos and does not make the best of Freddie’s vocal abilities. ‘Takin’ Care Of Business’, written by the famous jump blues songwriter Rudy Toombs, sounds antiquated, as if it came straight out of 1951 or something (that is, until it comes to the Singular Electric Blues Lick on the solo, sharper and stingier than anything we could have heard from an Ike Turner around 1951). ‘You Know That You Love Me’ feels like a pale shadow of ‘I’m Tore Down’, probably written, as it often happens, on the heels of the former’s commercial success but far less attention-grabbing.
The majority of the songs, though, are slow blues ballads, a few also sounding rather archaic, especially when they put an echo on Freddie’s vocals, like on ‘If You Believe (In What You Do)’, which borrows its primary melodic hook from Jimmy Reed’s ‘Honest I Do’ but fails to live up to the original’s charming minimalism. Apparently, ‘I Love The Woman’, the original B-side to ‘Hide Away’, was the song that turned a young Clapton into Freddie’s lifelong fan, but this might have been by sheer accident if it simply was the first Freddie King single that Eric laid his hands on: ‘Have You Ever Loved A Woman’ does all the things that ‘I Love The Woman’ achieves and more. More famous is the old bawdy blues tune ‘You’ve Got To Love Her With A Feeling’, earlier associated with the likes of pre-war blues mischievers like Tampa Red and Brownie McGhee; Freddie gives the song a statelier, solemn attitude, while still preserving some of the old bawdy lyrics ("she wiggled one time for the judge / and the judge put the cops in jail"), and the result proved even more popular with audiences than ‘Have You Ever Loved A Woman’ — apparently, not a lot of people could (or would) relate to being in love with your best friend’s wife, but everybody loves them a gal who "shakes all over when she walks".
Anyway, it’s really useless to try and make detailed comments on individual numbers; all that matters here, really, is whether one gets that «special vibe» from the combination of Freddie’s powerful voice and red-hot lashing electric style, or not. Clearly, the task was much easier in 1960-61, when you could only compare the style of Freddie King with all the styles before it, not after; I honestly believe, for instance, that Clapton would capture both the technical side and the spiritual essence of all these licks and take it to the next level as early as on his album with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. Even Freddie himself would continue to grow and mature both as a player and as a singer, and to the majority of listeners his recordings from the last five years of his life will probably feel far more awesome than these, comparatively tame short early singles. But to anybody who does not run away at the mere mention of «12-bar electric blues» even these tame early singles may come across as tasteful, enjoyable, and relatable; and that is not to mention their sheer historical importance, which, in the minds of some people, often gets automatically translated into genuine entertainment.
Only Solitaire reviews: Freddie King