Albert King: Live Wire / Blues Power

Stax

Recorded at San Francisco´s legendary Fillmore Auditorium in June 1968 during Albert King´s first engagement there as a headliner, Live Wire/Blues Power ranks with B.B. King´s Live at the Regal of four years earlier as one of the greatest and most influential live blues albums of all time. Performing six tunes, only two of which he´d recorded previously, the six-foot-four-inch blues titan was able to stretch out beyond the three-to-four minutes allowed on 45-RPM discs and finally capture on vinyl the way he played in person. The results were nothing short of incendiary. As critic Albert Goldman commented at the time: "Instead of bending or warping a note here and there for special effect, King skirls every kiss-off note, sending vicious waves along his strings like the ripples on a cobra´s back."