| Stevie Ray Vaughan If you're a Stevie Ray Vaughan fan, but have never listened to Albert King, you're in for a treat. Albert King is easily Stevie's biggest influence, and one listen to Albert will prove it. Albert, one of the "Three Kings," which also includes blues greats B.B. and Freddie King, provided the basis for most of Stevie's soloing style -- his phrasing, his choice of notes, his big bends. If you want to learn to play like Stevie Ray Vaughan, learn Albert King's licks first -- they're a bit slower and easier to pick up. Then jump into Stevie's hyper-speed Albert King tributes. If you want to go ahead and learn Stevie Ray Vaughan's style from two incredible DVDs, while saving 15%, click here. |
Pentatonic Scales for Guitar While a well-rounded guitarist will go far beyond simple pentatonic scales, the fact is, they work. They're almost the "wonder drug" of lead guitar playing -- they fit well in almost any situation. There are five different pentatonic shapes, but most guitarists learn only one. Albert King used all the pentatonic shapes, and he used them to perfection. If you want to play blues or rock guitar, and you want to play it with the soul and fire of an Albert King or Stevie Ray Vaughan, learn all five pentatonic shapes. Click here for a primer on pentatonic scales. |
| Animated Fretboard Teaches Albert's Licks GuitarVision.com's animated fretboard will teach you how to play the songs and solos of Albert King note for note. It's like having someone read the sheet music for you, then showing you how to play the songs on your guitar, right in your own house. Learn the music of Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, and more than a hundred other artists. Click here to learn more. |
Free Guitar Lessons and More Adam St. James' popular Guitar.com lesson column, "Shut Up 'n' Play Your Guitar," features a dozen essential guitar lessons for everyone from beginners to advanced players. Learn pentatonic and diatonic scales, exercises, chords, music theory, and more. Click here to access all those lessons, plus hundreds of celebrity interviews and videos through the website of guitar expert Adam St. James. |
| Blues Greats in Concert DVDs Many of the greats are gone now, but they live on in the great selection of blues concert and documentary DVDs available today at www.BluesLessons.com. Choose from dozens, including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker, Freddie King, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Robben Ford, and many more. Click here to see all the concert and documentary DVDs. |
The Three Kings Together with B.B. and Freddie, Albert King is considered one of the "Three Kings" of the blues. BluesLessons.com offers blues guitarists a special package deal on the Three Kings Signature Licks DVDs, which saves you 15% over the price of each individual DVD. Click here to learn more about BluesLessons.com's "Three Kings" DVD package today! |
If you're an Albert King fan, or a guitar player learning to play like blues legend Albert King, you've come to the right place.
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Albert King ( April 25 , 1923 – December 21 , 1992 ) was an influential American Blues guitarist and singer.
One of the "Three Kings" of the Blues guitar (along with B.B. King and Freddie King ), he stood 6 foot 4" weighed in at 260 pounds (118 kg) and was known as "The Velvet Bulldozer". He was born Albert Nelson into a humble family in Indianola , Mississippi , at a cotton plantation where he worked in his early days. One of his earlier influences in music was his own father, Will Nelson, who would often play the guitar . During his childhood he would also sing at a family gospel group at a church. He began his professional work as a musician with a group called In the Groove Boys , in Osceola , Arkansas . He also briefly played drums for Jimmy Reed 's band. The electric guitar became his signature instrument, his preference being the Gibson Flying V , which he named "Lucy".
His first hit was "I'm A Lonely Man", released in 1959 . However, it wasn't until his 1961 release "Don't Throw Your Love on Me So Strong" that he had a major hit, ranking 14th on the R&B charts. In 1966 he signed with the famous Stax record label and in 1967 released his legendary album Born Under A Bad Sign . The title track of that album (written by Booker T. Jones and William Bell ) became King's most well known song and has been covered by many artists (from Cream to Homer Simpson ). On February 1 , 1968 King was hired by promoter Bill Graham to open the show at the Fillmore West for John Mayall and Jimi Hendrix . King was the first blues musician to play at the Fillmore, and played several times at that venue along his career.
Albert King was a left-handed "upside-down/backwards" guitarist: he was left-handed but usually played right-handed guitars flipped over upside-down so the low E string was on the bottom. In later years he played a custom-made guitar that was basically left-handed, but had the strings reversed (as he was used to playing). He also used very unorthodox tunings ( i.e. , tuning as low as C to allow him to make sweeping string bends). A "less is more" type blues player, he was known for his expressive "bending" of notes, a technique characteristic of blues guitarists. However, while a conventional right-handed player will bend the note by pushing the string upwards against the frets, causing the pitch to go up, Albert King used an unorthodox approach of pulling the string downwards to get the same result.
Albert King influenced many later blues guitarists including Jimi Hendrix , Eric Clapton , Mike Bloomfield and Gary Moore . But of all later blues guitarists, Stevie Ray Vaughan was the one most strongly influenced by Albert King. King's influence can be clearly heard on Vaughan's slow blues songs. Eric Clapton's guitar solo on the 1968 Cream hit "Strange Brew" from the album Disraeli Gears is a note-for-note cover of King's solo on his Stax Records hit "Crosscut Saw".
Albert King died on December 21 , 1992 from a heart attack in Memphis, Tennessee, just before beginning a major European tour . -- Wikipedia.com