Freddie King

Posted by rockindomp3


These clips come from a local Texas TV show called The Beat, I mean The !!!! Beat, which was hosted by the legendary WLAC (Nashville) disc jockey Bill "Hoss" Allen, and the house band was Gatemouth Brown and his band. I believe the year is 1966. I love everything about these clips, from Freddie's shiny sharkskin suit (slightly too tight), to the big, greasy, conk on top his head. Notice that he didn't use a pick, his thumb looks gigantic on the strings. Freddie King (born Freddie Christian on September 30, 1934 in Glimer, Texas, one of the many dates that Wikipedia gets wrong) started out playing drums, working with Smokey Smothers, John and Grace Brim and Jimmy Reed. He switched to guitar after cutting his first disc for the El Bee label in 1956 and became a fairly big star riding high on a string of instrumental hits on the Federal label-- Hideaway (1960), San-Ho-Zay (1961), The Stumble ('61), etc. He later recorded for Atlantic's Cotillion subsidiary and then Leon Russell's Shelter Records where he recorded with Eric Clapton (who recorded King's Hideaway while in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers). He died of a heart attack in 1976 at age 42.
Bear Family has many volumes of The !!!! Beat available on DVD, performers included Rosco Gordon, Otis Redding, The Mighty Hannibal, Etta James, Louis Jordan, Clarence "Frogman" Henry, and too many others to mention--playing live, not lip synching.


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