Are You Listening?

We had a little rehearsal last night, new songs for this weekend. The Double E Riders is the name they have been using for the band on the radio ads. Sounds like a cowboy band, doesn’t it? I guess that’s cool.

Going through the archives of the foggy mind I was trying to think of something fun to play and I came up with, “I Love You More Every Day” by Freddy King. I love this song because, you can play it as a hard shuffle and it has the cool 1-6-2-5 turnaround that Freddy used a lot. So, you can kind of get a little jazzy with an edge on it. Great song.

Freddy King was tough as barbed wire. A lot of people associate Freddy King with instrumental songs like “Hideaway” or “The Stumble”. I’m here to tell you that Freddy was a great singer. His guitar could be piercing, shrieking, wailing, raucous, subtle and his voice could mirror that as well.

He was born in Texas and spent formative years in Chicago during the late ’40s. I’ve always thought that he bridged the gap between the Texas and Chicago “sounds”.

Here a nice YouTube of Freddy King doing “Have You Ever Loved A Woman”. This video is from Switzerland, proving once again that America’s Jazz and Blues legacy must have been more important to people in Europe that had cameras than people here that had cameras. Thank you Switzerland.

Freddy starts out by shouting; “This is the blues are you listening?”. Love it. Dig the outfit too, the shirt has, without a doubt, the widest collar I’ve ever seen. Pink jacket and matching polyester pants, beautiful. Also note that, Freddy slung his guitar strap over one shoulder instead of both. His shoulders are so big that I doubt he could have worn it in the normal fashion. He was a mighty, mighty man. Albert Collins did that too, by the way.

This is the blues. Are you listening?