Freddie King

📍Gilmer, TX 75644, USA

“I was born Fred King in September 1934 in Gilmer, a small town in the piney woods of East Texas, the son of Ella Mae King and J. T. Christian. Gilmer was a farming town, known for its sweet potatoes, and music was in my family: my mother and her brother, my uncle Leon King, both played guitar, and when I was six they gave me my first guitar and started teaching me. I listened to the country blues of Lightnin' Hopkins and to the records of Louis Jordan and T-Bone Walker on the radio, and I practised all the time, learning to pick with a plastic thumb pick and a metal finger pick, which gave me a big, strong sound. I was a big boy, and strong, and I played with real power. In 1949 my family moved from Texas to the South Side of Chicago, looking for work, and at sixteen I was sneaking into the blues clubs to hear Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and Jimmy Rogers, the giants of Chicago blues. I worked in a steel mill by day and played with bands at night, mixing the Texas and Chicago sounds. I made my first records in the 1950s, and in 1960 I signed with Federal Records in Cincinnati and recorded Hide Away, an instrumental that became a hit and that every blues guitarist had to learn. With Have You Ever Loved a Woman and The Stumble, I became one of the three Kings of the blues, with B.B. and Albert, and inspired Eric Clapton and many others. In 2012 I was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Gilmer remembers its Texas Cannonball.”

Sources: bibliolore.org Wikipedia: Freddie King