Freddie King

Freddie King was born Freddie Christian in Gilmer, Texas, on September 3, 1934. He learned guitar from his mother and uncle and bought an acoustic instrument with money earned picking cotton. His family moved to Chicago in 1949, placing the teenager inside a powerful postwar blues scene where he absorbed and competed alongside players influenced by Lightnin' Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, B. B. King and Chicago bandleaders.

King's 1960s recordings included Hide Away, Have You Ever Loved a Woman and I'm Tore Down. His family returned to Dallas in 1962 and King followed in 1963, making Texas a renewed home base rather than only a birthplace. In the 1970s he became closely identified with Austin's Armadillo World Headquarters and the blues-rock audience that embraced his forceful guitar style. King died in Dallas in 1976 at age forty-two. The Blues Foundation inducted him in 1982 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame recognized him as an Early Influence in 2012.

King's guitar vocabulary traveled easily into rock because it combined blues phrasing with sharp dynamics, instrumental hooks and unusually physical attack. Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and many later guitarists treated his records as source material rather than museum pieces.

His Texas identity has multiple chapters: East Texas childhood, a long Chicago apprenticeship, a Dallas return and a particularly important Austin period when blues and rock audiences mixed around venues such as the Armadillo.