For those of us lucky enough to see Freddie King live on stage, what really stands out to us is how powerful a performer he was ... it all happened once he stood up on stage.
I I've seen a couple concerts in my day but watching the entire crowd bounce up and down while he played at the 73 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival was, by far, the best live performance I've ever seen! There are no recordings that capture the essence of how badass he really was.
Thanks Joe. I've always known about Freddie but appreciated Albert and BB more through the years. Lately, Freddie's voice and playing is hitting me in a whole new way. I appreciate your commentary and analysis. The dynamics and nuances with the hammer ons, pull offs, slides and vibratos really do make a distinctive sound as opposed to playing as fast as possible.
Isn't life weird and wonderfull? Recently started doing big commute. Got myself a comfy car and decent sound system and a head unit that runs Spotify. About quarter to 10 last Weds I heard "Goin' Down" for the first time ever. Had that on repeat for a week solid. Just wow.
Saw Freddy King played bar table pool with him many times. Saw him step in and play sets with Bugs Henderson and John Nitzinger at Mother Blues on Lemmon Ave Dallas Tx. His manager offered me Tickets to see him and Leon Russle in Tulsa but I was still in high school school night.
Thanks for the excellent insight Joe!! I learn something valuable from you every time I watch you play live and/or when I watch a video like this one. 🙏
This is such an astute take on Freddie King's playing, technique and sound. You've captured Freddie's bite and attack. His 1973 LP on Shelter Records: Woman Across the River is an essential recording. Still.
Great point on dynamics. It really is a great way to convey different levels of volume, texture, and emotion without touching a knob. Essential skill imo. Rarely discussec but probably up there with bending, vibrato, and phrasing.
Texas Cannon Ball Freddie King, he was one of a kind super Bluesman. What a legend. Hey Joe, Howlin Wolf said a Bluesman don’t ever retire, just a thought. Play on Jimi !!!
Unique, informative, entertaining presentation and enjoyable to watch and listen. Thank you for your time and passion for music, artists and of course guitars. Cheers
Joe and Freddie and all the great players practice the unspoken rule of live performance : Every night you get another chance to be the best you can be. You can see that in Joe and Freddie had it too. Look for it in yourself. It's as much a part of music as practicing or gear. Always reaching. You'll never have a bad night...
Loving this channel, and I gotta admit, while it was a good video, I was most excited just to hear the mechanical sign flasher in the Nerdville sign. That's legit ladies and gentlemen. I'm a sign nerd.
He wouldn’t even do gary justice because he would largely ignore the parts of garys career where he was playing his best stuff. If you are gonna talk about gary moore his 80s output should be focused on not his blues stuff
I saw him blow Clapton off the stage back in the mid 70s. He's the most powerful blues guitarist I've seen to date (never saw SRV live). Saying he had a commanding presence is an understatement.
Freddie king and Otis Rush are two of my favorite blues guitarists. Of course some of my other main guitar influences, bonamassa, srv, jimmy V, johnny hiland, daniel donato, doc watson, junior brown. Funniest part, I'm in a successful death metal band, grindcore band, and black metal band. As close to successful as you can be with those styles lol pretty niche. That doesnt mean I'm not playing mass country and blues when im not playing 300bpm madness.
@ Joe B. - When I heard Freddie King, especially on his instrumental numbers, I hear certain things time and again in his playing. First, his unique picking style which included the use of a thumb-pick and finger-picks. Though Freddie King was a stone bluesman, he came of age in a time when many blacks - especially those born/reared in the rural south and west - heard a lot of country music and western swing. Freddie internalized a lot of those influences, and you can tell that he dug certain country sounds and tunes. He did an epic recording of the old standard "Remington Ride," done his way, of course - but with country influences intact. On many of his instrumentals, he chicken-picks and makes his axe squawk like a barn-yard critter. On others, he'll make it sound like a cat yowling. Another feature of his playing is two part improve or parts to tunes. He'd play some lines call-and-response style up high on the strings and then answer with his thumb further down the axe, often on the lower strings.This created the impression on many records, of two or more players trading lines/licks when it was just him. Call-and-response phrasing was just such a huge part of his playing, he was a real master of it. A lot of bluesmen when doing an instrumental, just throw together some stock licks and call it a day.Maybe it works, maybe not. But with Freddie King, you can tell he devoted a lot of time, though and effort to his instrumentals. They all work as memorable little self-contained compositions, so good they'll be in your head hours or even days later. So few guys in the blues had that ability to compose and play memorable instrumentals. Albert Collins comes to mind, but not too many others. Last but not least, Freddie King managed to cross-over and sell well on the pop charts (as well as the R&B/blues listings), too, when not many blues artists were doing that. The surf music fad had some of his tunes in it, for example. A real giant of guitar and a real giant of the blues.
I always appreciate an intelligent discourse, so thank you. This was terrific! To mirror his playing, Freddie King was also so emotive as a singer. He wasn't the first bluesman to cover Five Long Years, but the lyric seems to resonate more deeply with him. When he sings: "...I was shucking steel like a slave" it's so visceral that from then on you think of it as a Freddie King song, specifically. Eddie Boyd wrote it, and King actually follows Boyd's vocal cadence, but it's King who brings the hurt. There's also a vital and characteristic engagement in Freddie's delivery: when he sings: Have you ever loved a woman? it's an intimate question and not rhetorical. B.B. used to tell stories and set a song up with background. Albert used to use the guitar to establish the narrative for a while, delaying the lyric until it felt like a natural expression. But Freddie was the most insistent: piercing questions and playing to match. The three Kings. How I miss them.
@@michaelblum6537 - Yeah, can't go wrong with the "Three Kings" of the blues. I regret that Freddie was the only one of the three I never got to see/hear live.
@@GeorgiaBoy1961 when did you see Albert? There's a 14 minute video of him from The Fillmore East in 1970 and his tone is so memorable. Of course, he's playing the flying V and the crowd loves him, as they should. Of the 3 Kings I came to him last. I'd have seen Freddie, but he passed so soon.
@@michaelblum6537 - If memory serves, the performance I saw by Albert King was at the Chicago Blues Fest sometime in the mid-late 1980s. Looking it up, he was there in 1988, so that was probably it. Good times.... suddenly seems so long ago, too. Looking back, the 1980s were a good decade for live music. We lost a lot of amazing talents beginning in the 1990s, from SRV on down.
Didn`t Leon Russell and a lot to do in the popularity of Freddie King, by recognizing his talent and signing Freddie to his label "Shelter Records" - well that`s how I founded out about FK.
@ DuckTales: Yes, you are right. Joe B. mentions thumb-picks, but Freddie used finger-picks, too - you can hear it in his attack and the way the notes sound. And in certain licks he plays, which are relatively straight-forward for that style, but tougher for straight plectrum players.
My boyfriend owns Freddie Kings "main squeeze", his 1967 ES 355, with his case stencil that Freddie painted "Freddie King The Texas Cannonball, FRAGLE"". My boyfriend had covered Freddie since he was a teenager and suggested that Joe really does him justice, imagine that! He usually plays his ES335 but on occasion will gig with Freddie's guitar and usually suggests that to his surprise Freddie's 1967 355 sounds better than his favorite 335??? Great job on this one Joe! OOPS, Correction again Joey, Freddie played the 1967 ES355 at the show you mentioned, not a '72 355? Please get your facts straight as you are wrong on half of your articles...Thank you sonny...
Sorry you are wrong about the guitar Freddie used at the cotton bowl, Joe is right, it was a '72 ES355 with the Gibson logo embossed pickup covers for which were only made in 1972. Obviously, you no nothing really about vintage guitars since you are not a guitar player just the girlfriend (supposedly) of a wanna be guitarist, stick to palm reading maybe?
FREDDIE WAS A KILLER I MEAN HE WAS TOUGH THE MOMENT I HEARD HIS GUITAR JUMP OFF OF AN ALBUM BACK IN 1961 I WAS HOOKED MARCY LEVY TOLD ME SOME STORIES ABOUT FREDDIE TOURING WITH CLAPTON WHEN SHE WAS WITH ERIC CRAZY CARD GAMES & THE GREATEST GUITAR SOUNDS MARCY WAS IN MY BAND FOR 3 1/2 YEARS 2003-2005 + HEY WE HAD A GREAT TIME CARLOS GUITARLOS 90042 "SAVE A DANCE" A 2005 From 'HELL CAN WAIT' sung with Marcy Levy www.carlosguitarlosmusic.com/carlos/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/05-Save-a-Dance-1.mp3
Boyfriend here: Must explain the most important aspect that JOe totally missed. Freddie's greatest talent on the guitar. It's the "Black" thing. Freddie can change the space and timing on a note at such a unique place in a riff. NO one does that like Freddie. Jimmy Vaughan comes close but no one else, not even Clapton who is Freddie's greatest fan. JOes a nice guy but just inexperienced at only 40. I grew up with this music in Chicago and would hear these riffs right out of the horses mouth at a very young age. Big difference but then I am not "Hollywood JOe" (forgive me)
Come on Joe you know all this stuff about the guitar & don't know if you take the cord out half way you can get the neck by itself and middle position out of phase
Hmmm, Boyfriend stepping in Babe...He fails to mention that one in 1,000 can really play a guitar. They are born with it, you cannot learn it, so do not bullshit yourself guys...All the practice in the world will not change that...Sorry, don't blame me, it's God's fault.
Freddie is hands down, unarguably, THE BADDEST DUDE TO EVER PICK UP A GUITAR THAT EVER ROAMED PLANET EARTH
You are right about that.
Agree 200%
I remember thinking WTF Clapton stole EVERYTHING from Freddy!!!
Got to see him warm up Leon Russell - great show!!
Not sure of that, but sure he is my favorite « King »
For those of us lucky enough to see Freddie King live on stage, what really stands out to us is how powerful a performer he was ... it all happened once he stood up on stage.
Absolutely. What a powerful presence he was.
I I've seen a couple concerts in my day but watching the entire crowd bounce up and down while he played at the 73 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival was, by far, the best live performance I've ever seen! There are no recordings that capture the essence of how badass he really was.
As a player, B.B king moved me, But Freddie changed me as a player. As did you Joe!!!!
Thanks Joe. I've always known about Freddie but appreciated Albert and BB more through the years. Lately, Freddie's voice and playing is hitting me in a whole new way. I appreciate your commentary and analysis. The dynamics and nuances with the hammer ons, pull offs, slides and vibratos really do make a distinctive sound as opposed to playing as fast as possible.
'Help Me Through The Day' is my favourite Freddie King song. Beautiful vocals and guitar.
Love this series, thanks Joe.
That resonation with that lick @ 2:08 is soul stealer !!!
You're clips are medicine for the soul, Greetings from Germany.
That was cool! Great lesson Joe both history and playing! Keep em coming, very much appreciated!
Thank you Joe, Freddie is one of my favorites. I always learn something from your videos.
One of my Texas blues heroes. Texas missing Freddie King, Dude is one of the greatest to ever play
Could listen to Joe talk guitars for hours on end, so awesome
Isn't life weird and wonderfull? Recently started doing big commute. Got myself a comfy car and decent sound system and a head unit that runs Spotify. About quarter to 10 last Weds I heard "Goin' Down" for the first time ever. Had that on repeat for a week solid. Just wow.
Saw Freddy King played bar table pool with him many times. Saw him step in and play sets with Bugs Henderson and John Nitzinger at Mother Blues on Lemmon Ave Dallas Tx. His manager offered me Tickets to see him and Leon Russle in Tulsa but I was still in high school school night.
Thanks for the excellent insight Joe!! I learn something valuable from you every time I watch you play live and/or when I watch a video like this one. 🙏
I'm enjoying this series but I think they need to be longer. I could watch and listen to Joe all day.
This is such an astute take on Freddie King's playing, technique and sound. You've captured Freddie's bite and attack. His 1973 LP on Shelter Records: Woman Across the River is an essential recording. Still.
Joe, you’re helping manage my insanity during the lockdown. Thank you!!
Thanks for sharing Joe.
Brilliant Joe!! As a huge Freddie King fan I thought you extracted the essence of his style. Thank you!!
Thanks again
That's some pretty authentic Freddie King sounds there young feller. 👍👍
Joe....you're a nerd....and that's one more reason I love you, buddy!
This is a fantastic series. Thank you!
Wow thanks really great bit of deep insight Freddy could really put you on that journey.
Awesome Joe, love this nerdville legends series. Very cool... like the master himself. Cheers Damo, Tasmania
Great point on dynamics. It really is a great way to convey different levels of volume, texture, and emotion without touching a knob. Essential skill imo. Rarely discussec but probably up there with bending, vibrato, and phrasing.
Keep these videos coming!
That guitar sounds so good
JB explains things so great!
yep, loved Freddie king
Texas Cannon Ball Freddie King, he was one of a kind super Bluesman. What a legend. Hey Joe, Howlin Wolf said a Bluesman don’t ever retire, just a thought. Play on Jimi !!!
Yeah, Howlin' Wolf makes me sit up and take notice!
Troy Mattingly There is a real cool DVD about Howlin Wolf and his life history. I think I bought mine off of Amazon about 10 to 15 years ago.
@@VonBluesman Thank you, I appreciate the information, much!
Unique, informative, entertaining presentation and enjoyable to watch and listen. Thank you for your time and passion for music, artists and of course guitars.
Cheers
Joe, you're the best! Thanks
Well said, Rafael!
Good stuff, Joe.
Thanks.
Joe and Freddie and all the great players practice the unspoken rule of live performance : Every night you get another chance to be the best you can be. You can see that in Joe and Freddie had it too. Look for it in yourself. It's as much a part of music as practicing or gear. Always reaching. You'll never have a bad night...
Thanks Joe, this series is great.
Just found your series, thanks Joe.
Nov. 2024. Thank you Joe.
Agreed . Keep it going Joe!!
Thank you, Joe!
Loving this channel, and I gotta admit, while it was a good video, I was most excited just to hear the mechanical sign flasher in the Nerdville sign. That's legit ladies and gentlemen. I'm a sign nerd.
Please, made this longer... as 55 minutes or so! C'mon!
Great series!
Top notch Joe, 💖
Great stuff in this series Joe. Can we have one on Gary Moore please?
He wouldn’t even do gary justice because he would largely ignore the parts of garys career where he was playing his best stuff. If you are gonna talk about gary moore his 80s output should be focused on not his blues stuff
Gary Moore is powerful on acoustic guitar!
Yes that would be great!But it would take at least 2-3 hours and that would be just scratching the surface because he played so many different styles.
Or Rory Gallagher.
Great video. Didn’t he play a lot of his best stuff on a 53/54/55 gold top?
No
@@ebay9302 Freddie played a gold
Top initially. All those great early tunes of his were on a gold top. Not his later guitar
That Tone is Amazing! I would love to play with that! I got a $20 Amp.
I saw him blow Clapton off the stage back in the mid 70s. He's the most powerful blues guitarist I've seen to date (never saw SRV live). Saying he had a commanding presence is an understatement.
Freddie king and Otis Rush are two of my favorite blues guitarists.
Of course some of my other main guitar influences, bonamassa, srv, jimmy V, johnny hiland, daniel donato, doc watson, junior brown. Funniest part, I'm in a successful death metal band, grindcore band, and black metal band. As close to successful as you can be with those styles lol pretty niche. That doesnt mean I'm not playing mass country and blues when im not playing 300bpm madness.
Freddie king best Of soul
You know your a great guitar player when your just waiting for somebody like Joe B to hit those strings again
@ Joe B. - When I heard Freddie King, especially on his instrumental numbers, I hear certain things time and again in his playing. First, his unique picking style which included the use of a thumb-pick and finger-picks. Though Freddie King was a stone bluesman, he came of age in a time when many blacks - especially those born/reared in the rural south and west - heard a lot of country music and western swing. Freddie internalized a lot of those influences, and you can tell that he dug certain country sounds and tunes. He did an epic recording of the old standard "Remington Ride," done his way, of course - but with country influences intact. On many of his instrumentals, he chicken-picks and makes his axe squawk like a barn-yard critter. On others, he'll make it sound like a cat yowling. Another feature of his playing is two part improve or parts to tunes. He'd play some lines call-and-response style up high on the strings and then answer with his thumb further down the axe, often on the lower strings.This created the impression on many records, of two or more players trading lines/licks when it was just him. Call-and-response phrasing was just such a huge part of his playing, he was a real master of it. A lot of bluesmen when doing an instrumental, just throw together some stock licks and call it a day.Maybe it works, maybe not. But with Freddie King, you can tell he devoted a lot of time, though and effort to his instrumentals. They all work as memorable little self-contained compositions, so good they'll be in your head hours or even days later. So few guys in the blues had that ability to compose and play memorable instrumentals. Albert Collins comes to mind, but not too many others. Last but not least, Freddie King managed to cross-over and sell well on the pop charts (as well as the R&B/blues listings), too, when not many blues artists were doing that. The surf music fad had some of his tunes in it, for example. A real giant of guitar and a real giant of the blues.
I always appreciate an intelligent discourse, so thank you. This was terrific! To mirror his playing, Freddie King was also so emotive as a singer. He wasn't the first bluesman to cover Five Long Years, but the lyric seems to resonate more deeply with him. When he sings: "...I was shucking steel like a slave" it's so visceral that from then on you think of it as a Freddie King song, specifically. Eddie Boyd wrote it, and King actually follows Boyd's vocal cadence, but it's King who brings the hurt. There's also a vital and characteristic engagement in Freddie's delivery: when he sings: Have you ever loved a woman? it's an intimate question and not rhetorical.
B.B. used to tell stories and set a song up with background. Albert used to use the guitar to establish the narrative for a while, delaying the lyric until it felt like a natural expression. But Freddie was the most insistent: piercing questions and playing to match. The three Kings. How I miss them.
@@michaelblum6537 - Yeah, can't go wrong with the "Three Kings" of the blues. I regret that Freddie was the only one of the three I never got to see/hear live.
@@GeorgiaBoy1961 when did you see Albert? There's a 14 minute video of him from The Fillmore East in 1970 and his tone is so memorable. Of course, he's playing the flying V and the crowd loves him, as they should. Of the 3 Kings I came to him last. I'd have seen Freddie, but he passed so soon.
@@michaelblum6537 - If memory serves, the performance I saw by Albert King was at the Chicago Blues Fest sometime in the mid-late 1980s. Looking it up, he was there in 1988, so that was probably it. Good times.... suddenly seems so long ago, too. Looking back, the 1980s were a good decade for live music. We lost a lot of amazing talents beginning in the 1990s, from SRV on down.
Didn`t Leon Russell and a lot to do in the popularity of Freddie King, by recognizing his talent and signing Freddie to his label "Shelter Records" - well that`s how I founded out about FK.
his early 60's 'federal' recordings were choice. and lots of great instrumentals too.
I wonder what amp Joe was playing here. Killing it.
BB made these things popular, Freddie made them cool.
This sounds great ! I just gotta ask, does Joe really use a fender mustang amplifier !?
Freddy's guitar always sounded like a desperate cry ......Love his music
Damn dude, you getting some good tone.
Go listen to Freddie King play Going Down. A world of difference
Freddie King playing “Going Down” come on now!
Come on Jo, get that thumb pic. Been using it for ages and I still have my thumb 🤣
Didn't Freddie also use metal picks on the ends of his index and middle fingers as well? Sorta like banjo picks or something?
Yeah he did
@ DuckTales: Yes, you are right. Joe B. mentions thumb-picks, but Freddie used finger-picks, too - you can hear it in his attack and the way the notes sound. And in certain licks he plays, which are relatively straight-forward for that style, but tougher for straight plectrum players.
Just one metal pick, at the index finger :)
Interesting all the King guys played Gibsons =)
Gibson guitars have always had the biggest place in my heart.
No they did not mental
What'sthe difference between a es 345 and 355?
Hello Joe.
Jeff Beck reminds me a lot of Mr. King b/c he just plays so angry or passionately.
My boyfriend owns Freddie Kings "main squeeze", his 1967 ES 355, with his case stencil that Freddie painted "Freddie King The Texas Cannonball, FRAGLE"". My boyfriend had covered Freddie since he was a teenager and suggested that Joe really does him justice, imagine that! He usually plays his ES335 but on occasion will gig with Freddie's guitar and usually suggests that to his surprise Freddie's 1967 355 sounds better than his favorite 335??? Great job on this one Joe! OOPS, Correction again Joey, Freddie played the 1967 ES355 at the show you mentioned, not a '72 355? Please get your facts straight as you are wrong on half of your articles...Thank you sonny...
Sorry you are wrong about the guitar Freddie used at the cotton bowl, Joe is right, it was a '72 ES355 with the Gibson logo embossed pickup covers for which were only made in 1972. Obviously, you no nothing really about vintage guitars since you are not a guitar player just the girlfriend (supposedly) of a wanna be guitarist, stick to palm reading maybe?
Joe? Careful with that “R Word.” We don’t wanna hear any talk about you retiring!
It’ll never happen
Maaan dont retire in 20 years
Didn't Freddy also wear a metal pick on his index finger?
"Like a weapon" yep: Freddie's tone cut like razor blades
The Quentin Tarantino of guitarists and guitars history of popular music
Thank God for reverb! Period.
I wonder if anybody hears the way I do. When I hear Freddie playing he always seems a tiny bit sharp to me. Anybody else notice that?
😘😘😘❤️❤️❤️
FREDDIE WAS A KILLER
I MEAN HE WAS TOUGH
THE MOMENT I HEARD HIS GUITAR JUMP OFF OF AN ALBUM BACK IN 1961 I WAS HOOKED
MARCY LEVY TOLD ME SOME STORIES ABOUT FREDDIE TOURING WITH CLAPTON WHEN SHE WAS WITH ERIC
CRAZY CARD GAMES & THE GREATEST GUITAR SOUNDS
MARCY WAS IN MY BAND FOR 3 1/2 YEARS 2003-2005 +
HEY WE HAD A GREAT TIME
CARLOS GUITARLOS 90042
"SAVE A DANCE" A 2005
From 'HELL CAN WAIT'
sung with Marcy Levy
www.carlosguitarlosmusic.com/carlos/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/05-Save-a-Dance-1.mp3
nobody does freddie king, and no reverb please
More Peter Green tone than F King. Great playing though.
Freddie King didn’t use reverb like this
i'd rather be blind is a daily play on my way to work
Boyfriend here: Must explain the most important aspect that JOe totally missed. Freddie's greatest talent on the guitar. It's the "Black" thing. Freddie can change the space and timing on a note at such a unique place in a riff. NO one does that like Freddie. Jimmy Vaughan comes close but no one else, not even Clapton who is Freddie's greatest fan. JOes a nice guy but just inexperienced at only 40. I grew up with this music in Chicago and would hear these riffs right out of the horses mouth at a very young age. Big difference but then I am not "Hollywood JOe" (forgive me)
Age as nothing to do with soul. Some things can’t be taught
Used as a weapon.......
Come on Joe you know all this stuff about the guitar & don't know if you take the cord out half way you can get the neck by itself and middle position out of phase
to much reverb
Seriously??? 5mins is all the time u can give for Mr. Guitar Himself Freddy I'm better than any King???
Hmmm, Boyfriend stepping in Babe...He fails to mention that one in 1,000 can really play a guitar. They are born with it, you cannot learn it, so do not bullshit yourself guys...All the practice in the world will not change that...Sorry, don't blame me, it's God's fault.