Born Under A Bad Sign

Any list of seminal 1960s electric blues albums is incomplete without Albert King’s Born Under a Bad Sign positioned near the top. The Indianola, Mississippi-born “King of the Blues Guitar,” who cut his professional teeth as a resident of the St. Louis suburb of Lovejoy, Ill., cemented his legacy with his Stax Records debut album. While he’d recorded for labels like Vee-Jay, Parrot and Bobbin, it was his chemistry with the Stax team – label executives Al Bell, Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, songwriters Booker T. Jones and William Bell, and backing from Booker T. & the MGs and the Memphis Horns – that put King on the blues map.

Albert King, one of the single most influential bluesman in history, single-handedly ushered blues into the modern era by combining his direct, urgent Mississippi blues style with contemporary soul rhythms. He continually redefined the state of contemporary blues with his dry, husky voice and torrid Flying V guitar sound.