Simon Godfrey

Freddie King: The Texas CannonballHe was the guitarist other guitarists studied in secret. Eric Clapton learned "Hide Away" note by note from a hard-to-find record. Stevie Ray Vaughan absorbed his phrasing until it became the bedrock of Texas blues. Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Jeff Beck, and a generation of British players built their sound on his licks. Yet for most of his career, Freddie King remained a musician's musician-more influential than famous, more imitated than celebrated.
Born Fred Christian in the cotton country of Gilmer, Texas, in 1934, King carried the swing and vocal phrasing of East Texas blues north to Chicago's South Side clubs. There he forged a fierce, hybrid style: plastic thumbpick and metal fingerpick, explosive string bends, and a tone that cut through any band. Rejected by Chess Records, he found his breakthrough at Federal in Cincinnati. "Hide Away" and "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" made him a hitmaker; "I'm Tore Down" and a string of instrumental showcases made him essential listening.
When the British blues boom rediscovered him, King stepped into a second act-recording with King Curtis at Atlantic, then with Leon Russell at Shelter, where "Going Down" became a blues-rock anthem. He shared stages with Clapton and rock royalty, mentored the next generation of Texas players, and left a recorded legacy that still shapes the instrument. Drawing on the full arc of King's restless career-from sharecropper's son to Texas Cannonball-this biography traces the life, technique, and explosive influence of one of the three great Kings of the blues guitar.
He died at forty-two, still evolving. His language lives on in every guitarist who has ever bent a note past pitch and let it cry. Know the story. Hear the blues differently.