Albert King

Early Life

Albert King was born on April 25, 1923, most likely near Indianola, Mississippi, one of thirteen children in a family that worked a cotton plantation^[1][2]. His father left the family when King was young, and by around age eight the family had relocated to Arkansas^[1]. He built his first instrument as a child, a cigar-box guitar strung with a strand of broom wire, and later taught himself to play a real guitar as a natural left-hander by flipping a standard right-handed instrument upside down, an unorthodox approach that permanently shaped his sound^[1][2]. He learned by ear, playing along with records by Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, and T-Bone Walker, while also absorbing big-band jazz and Western swing from the radio^[1]. He later said he rehearsed alone for five years before ever playing with another musician^[1].

A Long Road to Stardom

King worked day jobs, including driving trucks and bulldozers, well into adulthood while playing music on the side, starting with bands in Arkansas around 1950^[1]. He adopted the surname “King” in the early 1950s, and later named his guitar “Lucy,” in each case drawing a deliberate connection to the fame of B.B. King, whom he claimed for years, without solid documentation, to be his half-brother^[2]. He moved to Gary, Indiana, in 1953 and briefly played drums in Jimmy Reed's band, cutting his own first single that same year for the small Parrot label, which went nowhere beyond local jukeboxes^[1]. Relocating to St. Louis in 1956, he became a full-time musician, and his 1961 single “Don't Throw Your Love on Me So Strong” became his first national hit, reaching number 14 on the Billboard R&B chart^[1].

The Stax Years

King's defining break came when Stax Records co-owner Estelle Axton recruited him after he walked into her Satellite Records store next door to the label's Memphis studio. She handed him a song called “Laundromat Blues” to use for his audition, warning him it would take some convincing to get her brother and label partner to sign a pure blues act^[1]. That song became King's first Stax single in 1966, and it anchored his 1967 album Born Under a Bad Sign, recorded with the label's house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and the Memphis Horns^[1]. Rock promoter Bill Graham later booked King into the Fillmore East and Fillmore West, introducing him to the young rock audiences of the psychedelic era and cementing a crossover appeal that outlasted the initial commercial run of the album^[1].

Style, Influence, and Later Career

King played a 1958 Gibson Flying V strung for a right-hander and left unrestrung, using an idiosyncratic dropped tuning that let him bend multiple strings at once into long, vocal-like phrases rather than fast runs^[2][1]. Guitar Player's Tom Wheeler once described him as a heavyweight with finesse, a bruiser with grace^[2]. His influence reached across genres: Jimi Hendrix drew from his phrasing, Eric Clapton has credited him as an influence on Cream's Disraeli Gears, and Stevie Ray Vaughan called him his single greatest influence^[2]. After Stax's collapse in the mid-1970s, King's output grew less consistent but he continued touring and recording, earning Grammy nominations for albums including San Francisco '83 and I'm in a Phone Booth, Baby, performing with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and releasing his final album, Red House, a nod to Jimi Hendrix, in 1991^[2].

Death and Legacy

King died of a heart attack on December 21, 1992, in Memphis, only two days after his final concert in Los Angeles, and was buried near his childhood home in Arkansas^[2]. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1983 and, posthumously, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, where Gary Clark Jr., John Mayer, and Booker T. Jones performed his songs in tribute^[2]. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked him twenty-second on its list of the 250 greatest guitarists of all time^[2].