ALBERT
KING’S LATE ’60s BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN
ALBUM ON
STAX RECORDS REISSUED APRIL 5
WITH
PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED BONUS TRACKS
Release
teems with King’s best-known songs:
“Born
Under a Bad Sign,” “Crosscut Saw,”
“Oh,
Pretty Woman” and “Laundromat Blues.”
Steve
Cropper, Booker T. & the MGs, the Memphis Horns
and
Stax’s songwriters help make it an all-time blues
classic.
LOS ANGELES,
Calif. — Any list of seminal 1960s electric blues albums is incomplete without
Albert
King’s Born Under a Bad Sign positioned near the top. The
Indianola, Mississippi-born “King of the Blues Guitar,” who cut his professional
teeth as a resident of the St. Louis suburb of Lovejoy, Ill., cemented his
legacy with his Stax
Records debut album. While he’d recorded for labels like Vee-Jay, Parrot and
Bobbin, it was his chemistry with the Stax team — label executives Al Bell, Jim
Stewart and Estelle Axton, songwriters Booker T. Jones and William Bell, and
backing from Booker T. & the MGs and the Memphis Horns — that put King on
the blues map.
The Stax
Remasters deluxe edition of Born Under a Bad Sign will be released by
Stax
Records, a unit of Concord
Music Group, on April 2, 2013. Music historian Bill Dahl wrote the new set
of liner notes.
King was
influenced by pre-World War II bluesmen Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon
Jefferson, and post-war artists T-Bone Walker and Howlin’ Wolf. He came to Stax
by way of Al Bell, a Little Rock native who’d met King when he played shows in
the area. King’s first Stax recording was “Laundromat Blues,” included on this
album, backed by Booker T. Jones on piano; Duck Dunn, bass; and Al Jackson, Jr.,
drums; plus the Memphis Horns (Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love) and Raymond Hill
(sax player on Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88”). The song had come by way of an
unsolicited songwriting demo that Stax co-founder Estelle Axton correctly
believed could be a hit for King.
“Crosscut
Saw” is one of King’s best-known recordings as yet dated back to 1941 when Delta
bluesman Tommy McClennan recorded it for Bluebird, and Willie Sanders & the
Binghamton Boys cut it in ’63. A.C. “Moohah” Williams, a veteran DJ at Memphis
R&B station WDIA-AM, brought it to King’s attention.
Booker T.
Jones and Stax soul singer William Bell came up with the thundering bass riff
that defined the title track “Born Under a Bad Sign.” The song notched #49 on
the R&B chart in 1967, and was covered in short order by Cream on its 1968
Wheels of Fire album. Soon King himself was playing venues like the
Fillmore Auditorium to young white rock audiences.
Another one
of the signature tracks, “Oh, Pretty Woman,” written by WDIA DJ Williams,
required the steady presence of Steve Cropper’s rhythm guitar to augment King’s
lead licks. King received songwriting help from David Porter, on leave from his
usual collaboration with Isaac Hayes, on “Personal Manager,” which was the
B-side of the title track single.
Born
Under a Bad Sign was also notable for its selection of covers. King gave
the Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller R&B standard “Kansas City” an urban blues
treatment. He’s right at home with Fenton Robinson’s “As the Years Go Passing
By.” Ivory Joe Hunter’s “I Almost Lost My Mind” is a rare King ballad with
countrypolitan overtones and jazz flute, an unlikely showcase for his rich
baritone.
For this
special reissue Stax Records has reached into its vaults to provide previously
unissued bonus tracks in the form of alternate takes of “Born Under a Bad Sign,”
“Crosscut Saw,” “The Hunter,” “Personal Manager” and an untitled,
never-before-released instrumental.
According to annotator Dahl, “Thanks to Born Under a Bad Sign, Albert King became a full-fledged blues luminary, masterfully bridging the gap between the Chitlin’ Circuit and the rock arena. He would make more great Stax albums, but he’d never top this one.”
Albert King will be posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on April 18, 2013.
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