Albert King: the Ultimate Collection

March 19, 2011 by DaleR
Filed under: Album Reviews

I have decided that I would like to review some of the music from my collection. I am not getting any of this music free and if I ever do I will let you know. I have a large cd collection and I loaded most of this music into my laptop and it says that I have 82 days worth of music in my computer. That is82 days played 24 hours a day solid Not all of this music is blues. I have pretty eclectic musical tastes when it comes to listening but when I play guitar, everything I play has its roots in the blues.

The first cd I have decided to review is “Albert King: The Ulitmate collection”. This is a two cd set with a prety nice booklet enclosed. There 39 tracks here and in my opinion, not a bad one in the mix. I think my favorite is “Crosscut Saw.” That song has been covered many times before Albert King but he added that latin beat and reinvented the song. When you look over the 39 songs in the collection you will see all of your favorites. There are some there that you may have forgotten or never heard. There are also some live cuts. If you have a chance pick this one up.

I think that it is important to understand that Albert King was from near St. Louis, Missouri but really came into his own in Los Angeles. There he played with Jimmi Hendrix and Janice Joplin. He was also a major influence on Stevie Ray Vaughn. In fact he and Stevie have released an album together.

Albert King is left-handed and played his guitar upside down. His signature guitar was a Gibson Flying V and since he played left-handed he could put a lot more strength in to bending the higher strings on the neck and get a sound that made it possible to identify him as soon as you hear it.