Customer Reviews

Live Wire / Blues Power

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Well the Blues is meant to be played live. It was never a genre for three minute radio songs. When Albert king signed at Stax he produced several hit singles beginning with "Laundromat Blues" and going on from there. This was his first live album- ever. He produced three recordings from it, this one and "Wednesday and Thursday Night in San Francisco". The latter two were not released until 1990 when the Stax label was ressurrected under the Fantasy organization. Albert plays a host of new material and reworkings for this LP. It was his first outing at the Fillmore where he was the headliner. He woos the young audience and introduces them to what the blues is all about. He opens the set with Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man", a tune he used for about a dozen years after this as his opening with his line "take off your shoes and slip them under the seat". He goes into the title track "Blues Power" from here. This a Talking Blues, a type that Albert excelled at. B.B. and Freddie never did any talking blues, Albert loved to talk! It is interesting that this type of blues originated in Appallacia with white players in the 1920s. Albert is the all time virtuoso of the talking blues witness "Matchbox", "Cold Feet" and others. This ten minute outing contains a comprehensive overview of his guitar style. It is very excellent and the tone of his guitar is fabulous. It of course has his signature stop break he first recorded at Chess in 1961 with "Won't Be Hangin Round". SRV used it in Texas Flood (Live)! This song has a lot of jargon that places Albert as an older player with a young audience, such as "Soda Fountain" and "Guys and Gals"..however, it's over their heads, they were into his guitar. The title "Blues Power" is of course the catch phrase of the sixties various "Powers" (Austen Powers!!) and like "Born Under A Bad Sign" (Age of Aquarius!!)these attempts at contemporizing the blues were lost in the fabulous guitar work outs. No one cared about the lyrics or content only the sound.

Albert does a reworking of his first minor hit with King Records "Blues At Sunrise" with a small amount of Hendrix type feedback (he'd been doing this for a long time) and it's a great slow blues offering. He also does the closest thing to a slide riff he'd ever done with B.B. King's "Please Love Me". "Night Stomp" is an interesting reversal of the famous 9th chord runs he did in Overall Junction. He wrote this tune with the album's producer Al Jackson, Jr, the famous drummer of the MG's. He also wrote "Cold Feet" the talking blues, with Albert! The album closes with "Look Out" which was of course "Overall Junction" redone. This is interesting with the strange almost Buddy Guy bends he produced- it's different from anything he ever recorded.

This is a classic recording. It was at a time when the blues revival of the sixties was waning and Jimi Hendrix (who played with Albert) had taken the blues to a new level of blues-rock. Albert became accepted as an innovator of modern urban blues with his soulful recordings for Stax records. However, live he always played traditional blues and often his set included tunes from the 1940s (check out the other two albums e.g."Driftin Blues"). I saw him in 1990 and his set included "Stormy Monday" and "Move To The Outskirts of Town". Get all three of these CDs, they are an historic record of the blues influence on music of the 1960s.

This is the album which made an Albert King fan out of me as a teenager, when it was first released. Big Albert had come into his own and then some with his series of classic 1960s Stax singles (and the breathtaking "Born Under A Bad Sign" album, which included several of those singles), and he proved a natural fit in laying his soul-sounding vocals and singular crying guitar style over that classic, down home deep soul rhythm section. But with "Live Wire/Blues Power" he stepped onto another level entirely; with a Fillmore West audience primed for the showmen who'd leaned on the blues to launch their own incendiary styles, Big Albert gave them a dose of the real rural-soul blues and totally flattened crowds who probably knew him previously, if at all, as either a rumour or a fellow whose name was dropped by their hot and heavy rock heroes.

He had the right tools to nail them, too: that bent and crying guitar style let loose as though the Fillmore had his name on it; those gospel-laced, soul-like vocals gave even the least of the lyrics a humane lace; the aplomb of his backing band hoisted him and spread him throughout the hall, whether firing an exuberantly rocking instrumental ("Watermelon Man," "Night Stomp"), supporting a good-natured, puckish monologue ("Blues Power," which also has some of the richest guitar playing King has ever had captured on recordings), walking him through a classic slow blues ("Blues at Sunrise"), or galloping for a set closer ("Overall Junction," mistitled still as "Look Out" on this set) which gives the King guitar a chance to laugh, weep, and cheer before the finish.

Big Albert's Fillmore recordings have taken on, justly, a status among the prime of the bluesmen of his (and just about any) era. It took years for the rest ("Wednesday Night in San Francisco," "Thursday Night in San Francisco") to see the light of day, but take the three of them together and you have about as powerful a record of a blues giant at peak power in concert as can be asked. Albert King's career was far from over; he had a good number of bright recordings yet to make. But for the essence of what it was that earned him his reputation, it just does not get more incandescent than this. He didn't have to be quite the universal legend his namesake B.B. King had become - Albert King's career needs no apology. And, especially, neither does music like this.

If you wonder where Stevie Ray Vaughn got his outstanding guitar licks on "Texas Flood", listen to "Blues Power". They're all there in this original by Albert King. I saw B. B. King on TV a few times around 1970, but on Sunday nights around 1971 there was a show on PBS of rock concerts from the Filmore. One night Albert King was on there, a film of part of this very performance! That is what cinched it for me as a blues fan. I'd never heard guitar playing that touched so close to home. Every phrase was dynomite. I can't recomend this album enough.

I just unwrapped this CD this afternoon, popped into the player and ... it's EXCELLENT! What an inspiration Mr. King must have been to Clapton et al. Each track on this one SMOKES BIG TIME ! The guitar is perfect, raw, loud and captivating. This is what I've been looking for since I expired all of Michael Bloomfield's stuff. If you love Bloomfield, you'll love this and vice versa.

I'll keep this review brief. This CD is nothing less than a Blues guitar statement! One like few others. An absolute must for Blues fans, period. Five stars are not enough for this CD!

Wow. I just came across this CD for real cheap, and boy was I glad I got it. I have listened to lots of blues players of different types, and the guitar of Albert King is amazing, especially on this disc. I have his In Session CD live with SRV, which was a really strong CD, but this particular CD presents a better sound of his guitar, in my opinion. It sounds sweeter, more well-rounded, powerful, diverse, and dead-on. I really love Albert King's work, and I always wish songs like "Blues Power" and "Blues at Sunrise" were much much longer because this type of slower blues has the sweetest licks. Get this CD. It radiates such warm, positive energy.

This is a seminal album....one of the finest live concert recordings ever, irrespective of genre. I saw King Albert twice at the Fillmore East in the old days [this one was recorded at Fillmore West], and this CD [or my old vinyl LP for that matter] captures him in all his live glory. Albert was a consummate professional who hadn't played large venues for the most part in his career when Bill Graham tapped him for the Fillmores, and he succeeded in pleasing [no, knocking out!!] audiences and turning them on to the blues....if you're counting your coins and wondering which next blues CD purchase will best serve your budget [or even if you're made of money and don't care either way but love the blues] - BUY THIS ONE!!!

Legendary blues guitarist Albert King really hits his stride on this CD (originally released in 1969). Worth it just to hear the uptempo classic "Night Stomp". Arguably, this is King's best album. All the tracks are great, and this is one disc that really sticks-to-your-ribs, and one that you will go back and play again and again! A great disc for budding blues guitarists to listen to... you'll be hard-pressed to find a better teacher (with the possible exception of Freddie King). Regardless, this disc is a must for both blues and rock fans alike. Well worth the price.

This does not quite have the voltage of a Cream blowout, but when such rock bands played for hippies, they used the platform to introduce their idols, giving black music far more exposure, and sales, then in the 1940s and 50s when it was first being made.

King does a fantastic live electric blues set--this is blues at rock volume, but the music itself is purist 12-bar. King's guitar work is of course fantastic.

Straightforward blues, but it does not get better than this.

I own two copies of the vinyl version of this album and have played them for the past 40 years, waiting for the CD version so that I could have the music in a more transportable version. I was concerned about loss of quality in a CD version. The quality is excellent. You can still hear Albert's fingers on the strings. Night Stomp is still the greatest!