Dubbed the “Velvet Bulldozer” – a reference to the combination of his smooth, sensuous voice and imposing, six feet four inches, (some folks have said he was six foot seven which he clearly wasn’t though slightly taller than BB King and Little Milton*) 250-pound figure – the Mississippi-born King was almost 40 when he scored his first R&B hit, “Don’t Throw Your Love On Me So Strong,” in 1961 – which, appropriately enough, was issued by the Cincinnati-based King label. But it was another five years before King hit the charts again. By then, his commercial fortunes had been improved by his alliance with brother and sister Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton’s Memphis-based Stax label, then making a name for itself in the world of soul music and R&B. Though Stewart wasn’t convinced that a blues artist would be suitable for Stax, Axton persuaded him to take a chance with King and then found a song for the Mississippi singer/guitarist, “Laundromat Blues,” which became a Top 30 US R&B smash.
King’s tenure with Stax lasted from 1966 until 1974, during which time he scored 11 charting singles for the company. Though the biggest was 1974’s “That’s What The Blues Is All About” (No.15 US R&B), undoubtedly his most famous song is “Born Under A Bad Sign,” recorded in 1967, which just scraped into the US R&B Top 50 but came to be regarded as his signature track.
What made Albert King special were also his unconventional guitar tunings, which are kind of a mystery even to this day. Some say that he tuned C-B-E-F#-B-E while luthier Dan Erlewine, who made one of King's guitars, cited the C-F-C-F-A-D tuning. Other various open and dropped tunings are mentioned all around, including open E minor and open F. The string gauge he used was also pretty weird, going from 0.009" to 0.050".
Photo by Don Paulsen
Don's Tunes
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