Albert King: Best Of (1968-73)

(Stax)

It's been established already that modern electric blues of the great Kings' (B.B. and Albert) persuasion is a deaf spot for me -- can't explain it, respect and acknowledge it, but it doesn't connect here. As with the unrelated but almost synonymous B.B. King, there are several early sides of Albert's that I really love, and going a bit further into the '60s and '70s you'll find outstanding pieces like "Born Under a Bad Sign" and "C.O.D.," plus a pair of brilliant, underrated performances in "Cadillac Assembly Line" and "Cockroach." What's surprising is how much more Albert King at his best works for me than B.B. King at his best, but that's another digression for another time and doesn't really bear detailed analysis. The point is Albert's work is witty, vibrant, and it swings like hell occasionally -- but it still has that strange thud that leaves me distant from it.

This compilation, though, gives little indication of where King's deepest gifts lie; it's really an hour or so of blues-tinged and swelteringly slick soul music, polished and urbane in a far greater sense even than most material Stax generally put out, certainly far more so than anything we tend to associate with blues, even on the deeper end of the Delta electric spectrum. Despite King's fine guitar and consistently grand vocal performances, there's something hollow and anonymous about the material from this tiny, ultimately sort of insignificant phase in his career -- by no standards, mine or anyone's, is this a real collection of the "best of" Albert King. No scholar would dispute that, and no casual fan would either; I don't even go that far but I can still sense how poor a job this does of extracting the meat from this period in an illustrious career and playing to its artist's strengths. There are too many covers, for one thing -- and as an interpreter, King doesn't really excel or venture out into real feeling the way you hear it on his own material.

Still, I say this with a modicum of hesitation because the reason Best Of is still sitting in my collection is that there was one night several years ago -- a considerable span of time after my brother gave it to me and I gave it a few cursory spins -- when it clicked and I wallowed in it and had the time of my life. The lights were down, I'd just come home from a bar (this is when I drank occasionally, trying to turn my life into a low-tier film noir) and was in a surly mood, and Albert King sang to me that night. On the assumption that such a moment may happen again, this is nice to have. I mean, there are times, right? We all have those times. On that basis I wonder if there's more to this than I'm hearing right now, if it's even possible to hear it outside the right context. You know the territory. If you're there, maybe you should pick this up.