Freddie King - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 5-27-1974

The flood of posts from the Ebbets Field radio broadcasts continues. Here's a 1974 show starring Freddie King.

I posted one Freddie King concert so far. It also is from 1974, but I didn't know the date. This one is a little bit better, I think. It definitely is longer, well over double the length. I've done enough of these Ebbets Field shows that I'm pretty confident this had to be an early show and a late show, since that was the constant pattern for the venue. But I don't know where the break took place, if that's true. Also, no song was played twice.

These Ebbets Field concerts almost always sound excellent, with few problems, which is a big reason why I'm prioritizing posting them. But there were some flaws with this recording. One is that some songs had missing pieces. For "Come On, Part 1" and "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," I was able to make fixes. That's why those two have "[Edit]" in their titles. But for the song "That's Alright," I couldn't find any live versions of the same song from around the same time to use for a fix. So I had to leave that one incomplete.

The music here is unreleased. 

This album is an hour and 49 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Freddie King)
02 I'm Ready (Freddie King)
03 Ain't No Sunshine (Freddie King)
04 Ghetto Woman (Freddie King)
05 Come On, Part 1 [Let the Good Times Roll] [Edit] (Freddie King)
06 Pack It Up (Freddie King)
07 Have You Ever Loved a Woman [Edit] (Freddie King)
08 Blues No. 4 [Instrumental] (Freddie King)
09 T.V. Mama (Freddie King)
10 Going Down (Freddie King)
11 Wee Baby Blues (Freddie King)
12 Going Down [Reprise] [Instrumental] (Freddie King)
13 talk by emcee (Freddie King)
14 talk (Freddie King)
15 That's Alright [Incomplete] (Freddie King)
16 Big Legged Woman (Freddie King)
17 Sweet Home Chicago (Freddie King)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1Bmt1iK9 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/nndTKyb50KJtSf5/file

The cover image is from Alex Cooley's Electric Ballroom on January 7, 1974, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Freddie King - WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, Late 1974

Here's another episode of the "Ultrasonic" radio show. This one features a concert by blues legend Freddie King.

This is the first album I've posted featuring just Freddie King, so I'll say a little bit about him. His Wikipedia entry says he "was an American blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is considered one of the 'Three Kings of the Blues Guitar' (along with Albert King and B. B. King, none of whom were related). Known for his soulful and powerful voice and distinctive guitar playing, King had a major influence on electric blues music and on many later blues guitarists." 

Born in Texas in 1934, he first rose to fame in the blues world in the early 1960s with the instrumental "Hide Away" and the song "Have You Ever Loved a Woman." (Derek and the Dominos did a great version of that second one.) In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he crossed over into popularity with rock audiences. He still just played the blues, but he frequently performed at rock festivals and on TV and radio shows like this one. Fun fact: he got namechecked in "We're an American Band" by Grand Funk Railroad. ("Up all night with Freddie King. I got to tell you, poker's his thing.")

Unfortunately, he worked hard (performing over 300 concerts a year) and partied hard. This led to an early death, in 1976, at the age of 42. It was due to complications from stomach ulcers.  Here's his Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more: 

Freddie King - Wikipedia 

At first, I had a popular bootleg version of this performance. It has some issues, like wobbling of levels during the first song. But luckily, I found a better version. I found out it was included on a rather obscure box set called "Texas Flyer." The bootleg just says it's from some point in 1973. The box set version says "late 1974." I'm going with that, though it's frustrating that even that is vague. 

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 Big Legged Woman (Freddie King)
02 Woman Across the River (Freddie King)
03 Look Over Yonders Wall (Freddie King)
04 Band Intros - Ain't No Sunshine (Freddie King)
05 Sweet Home Chicago (Freddie King)
06 Boogie Funk [Instrumental] (Freddie King)
07 Little Bluebird (Freddie King)
08 Come On [Let the Good Times Roll] (Freddie King)
09 Going Down (Freddie King)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/F4rw1BEF

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Coyy94FuXnKDeZu/file

The cover image is from the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switerland, in June 1973. 

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 6: Freddie King

I'm back with more from the third day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. Here's a set by blues legend Freddie King.

Freddie King was a key blues singer and guitarist, starting in the 1950s. However, he died young, in 1976, at the age of 42 years old, from a combination of stomach ulcers and acute pancreatitis. Due to his untimely death, there aren't that many concert bootlegs from him (though there are a good number of official live albums).

Most of the surviving recordings from this festival are soundboard bootlegs, but in this case, it's an audience bootleg. It's one that was only made public in the early 2020s, and it hasn't been widely shared until now. The sound quality is pretty good for an audience boot. I tried to help by doing my usual tricks, using MVSEP to reduce the crowd noise during the songs, and using UVR5 to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments. (I don't know why so many boots have the lead vocals low in the mix, but it's a surprisingly common problem.) 

King was known for his lead guitar playing as much or more as his vocals. So three of the six songs here are instrumentals, including "Hideaway," which became a surprise pop hit in 1960.

Since this album is relatively short compared to others from the festival, I think the odds are good that there's more that didn't get recorded. The odds of that are greater because there were chunks missing from the last two songs, suggesting the taper stopped at least once. I used other live recordings from 1969 to fill in missing bits there, which is why those two have "[Edit]" in their titles. At least we do get a DJ announcing the end of the set at the end of the last song, though there could have been an encore after that. 

Many acts at the festival performed on more than one day, but this was King's only performance in the festival. 

This album is 32 minutes long.

01 San Ho Zay [Instrumental] (Freddie King)
02 I'm Tore Down (Freddie King)
03 You Got to Love Her with a Feeling (Freddie King)
04 Hideaway [Instrumental] (Freddie King)
05 Play It Cool [Edit] (Freddie King)
06 Sen Say Shun [Instrumental] [Edit] (Freddie King)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1sHzrYcH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WM7UyxpTCTi8vlU/file

The cover is from this exact concert. It's kind of amazing to me how often I was able to find one, but just one, photo of each musical act from this festival. This is another case of that. The original of this photo was in black and white, but I used the program Kolorize to colorize it.