A few blogs ago i wrote something on Albert King, one of
the old masters of Texas blues, and going back further
i wrote an article on the other Albert of Texas, Albert
Collins, who died from smoking related throat cancer
in the early 1990`s after a brief dazzling career for
the blues label ALLIGATOR. Albert Collins took his
time getting commercial and critical recognition
of his slasher style electric blues, he started out
in around 1970 recording what would have to be
regarded as lackluster albums which were totally
lacking any of the innovation which become evi-
dent on his ALLIGATOR albums from around `80
onwards. His tool of art was a Fender Telecas-
ter, and unlike the majority of artists in the
blues genre, Albert Collins never used any
pick. This gave his guitar dynamics a raw
and rich edge which blues pickers simply
could not copy. When Albert started out,
he was more renowned as an instrumen-
talist than a singer and one song that
i like of his from his earlier mediocre
days, which is an instrumental by the
way, is a 2 minute tune by the name
of HARRIS COUNTY LINE-UP. The mel-
ody which Albert plays to the song is
totally symbolic of what you imagine
hangs out in a county jail somewhere
deep in the american mid-west. This
song was released on a double album
consisting of his first two recordings,
HARRIS COUNTY LINE-UP comes off
the second one i believe. If you are
a blues fan, do hunt it down, there
might even be a few other listen-
able songs if you listen closely.
No comments:
Post a Comment