![](\"http:\/\/i84.photobucket.com\/albums\/k32\/conqueroo\/c7a8d053-c0ff-4a77-b08a-ac5e0b8ca9dd.jpg\")
Release teems with King\u2019s best-known songs: \u201cBorn Under a Bad Sign,\u201d \u201cCrosscut Saw,\u201d \u201cOh, Pretty Woman\u201d and \u201cLaundromat Blues.\u201d <\/p>\n
Release teems with King\u2019s best-known songs: \u201cBorn Under a Bad Sign,\u201d \u201cCrosscut Saw,\u201d \u201cOh, Pretty Woman\u201d and \u201cLaundromat Blues.\u201d <\/p>\n
Steve Cropper, Booker T. & the MGs, the Memphis Horns
and Stax\u2019s songwriters help make it an all-time blues classic.<\/p>\n
LOS ANGELES, Calif. \u2014 Any list of seminal 1960s electric blues albums is incomplete without Albert King\u2019s Born Under a Bad Sign positioned near the top. The Indianola, Mississippi-born \u201cKing of the Blues Guitar,\u201d 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\u2019d recorded for labels like Vee-Jay, Parrot and Bobbin, it was his chemistry with the Stax team \u2014 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 \u2014 that put King on the blues map.<\/p>\n
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 5th, 2013. Music historian Bill Dahl wrote the new set of liner notes.<\/p>\n
King was influenced by pre-World War II bluesmen Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and post-war artists T-Bone Walker and Howlin\u2019 Wolf. He came to Stax by way of Al Bell, a Little Rock native who\u2019d met King when he played shows in the area. King\u2019s first Stax recording was \u201cLaundromat Blues,\u201d 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\u2019s \u201cRocket 88\u201d). 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrosscut Saw\u201d is one of King\u2019s 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 \u201963. A.C. \u201cMoohah\u201d Williams, a veteran DJ at Memphis R&B station WDIA-AM, brought it to King\u2019s attention. <\/p>\n
Booker T. Jones and Stax soul singer William Bell came up with the thundering bass riff that defined the title track \u201cBorn Under a Bad Sign.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Another one of the signature tracks, \u201cOh, Pretty Woman,\u201d written by WDIA DJ Williams, required the steady presence of Steve Cropper\u2019s rhythm guitar to augment King\u2019s lead licks. King received songwriting help from David Porter, on leave from his usual collaboration with Isaac Hayes, on \u201cPersonal Manager,\u201d which was the B-side of the title track single. <\/p>\n
Born Under a Bad Sign was also notable for its selection of covers. King gave the Jerry Leiber\/Mike Stoller R&B standard \u201cKansas City\u201d an urban blues treatment. He\u2019s right at home with Fenton Robinson\u2019s \u201cAs the Years Go Passing By.\u201d Ivory Joe Hunter\u2019s \u201cI Almost Lost My Mind\u201d is a rare King ballad with countrypolitan overtones and jazz flute, an unlikely showcase for his rich baritone. <\/p>\n
For this special reissue Stax Records has reached into its vaults to provide previously unissued bonus tracks in the form of alternate takes of \u201cBorn Under a Bad Sign,\u201d \u201cCrosscut Saw,\u201d \u201cThe Hunter,\u201d \u201cPersonal Manager\u201d and an untitled, never-before-released instrumental.<\/p>\n
According to annotator Dahl, \u201cThanks to Born Under a Bad Sign, Albert King became a full-fledged blues luminary, masterfully bridging the gap between the Chitlin\u2019 Circuit and the rock arena. He would make more great Stax albums, but he\u2019d never top this one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Albert King will be posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on April 18, 2013.<\/p>\n
Source: Stax Records<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Release teems with King\u2019s best-known songs: \u201cBorn Under a Bad Sign,\u201d \u201cCrosscut Saw,\u201d \u201cOh, Pretty…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}