On Albert King

From the Archive: December 21, 1992] - There's few of the great blues singers left and Albert King wasn't only a great one. He was one of a kind.

Albert King had been playing the blues for a long time before he finally hit it with the Born Under a Bad Sign album in '67. He'd recorded for Parrott in '53 and for Chess who didn't release his stuff till he was famous in the early '60s. You can hear him grousing about the situation on the song "Cold Feet," a single for Stax. It's kind of amazing that someone who could play guitar like that could go on unnoticed for so long. But when Born Under a Bad Sign was released, King quickly earned the accolades of the top rock guitarists like Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.