Another Pair of Kings Pt. 1-Saunders King

Every blues fan knows about the three Kings of the Blues, Albert, BB & Freddie, but we're going to add two more: Saunders King and Earl King. Part 1 takes a look at the music and life of Saunders King who was in fact, the first blues artist to solo on electric guitar, preceding T-Bone Walker by two months. Saunders was a fine guitarist in the Charlie Christian mold, and also a marvelous vocalist, able to sing blues, pop and ballads with equal facility. He was also the father-in-law of guitarist/bandleader Carlos Santana. Get the whole story here on Blues You Should Know. 

Transcript

Blues You Should Know

“Another Pair of Kings”

Bob Frank

BB, Albert, and Freddie: the three Kings. Every blues fan knows them and certainly

these three hold an exalted position in the hierarchy and history of blues music. But

are there more? Ah, now we return to our “Blues Hunter” mentality; if there are

three who are this good, there must be at least two more.

There are actually several more “Kings of the Blues” in that we have other artists

with the surname of “King”, and I believe we can find two who will allow us to adjust

the hierarchy just a bit, moving BB, Albert & Freddy a notch up to the position of

“Titans” while we make room for our additional Kings, Saunders King and Earl King.

Saunders King was born in Caddo Parish, Louisiana in March of 1909 but moved, at

a young age, with his preacher parents to Oakland, CA where he attended school,

and sang in his father’s church. As adulthood approached, Saunders joined the

Southern Harmony Four and sang on NBC radio as well as at revivals and church

events.

In 1938, at the somewhat advanced age of twenty-nine, Saunders took up guitar,

purchasing an Epiphone arch-top acoustic. Always with one ear cocked towards

blues & jazz, and one ear toward pop, Saunders followed the careers of Eddie

Durham, the Basie sideman who doubled on trombone and electric guitar, and

Alvino Rey, the novelty instrumental virtuoso you may remember from the old King

Family television Show.

In 1939, though, an epiphany was awaiting Saunders King. That year he heard, then

saw, then met, for the first time, the electric guitar playing Oklahoman, Charlie

Christian, then touring with the Benny Goodman band, which he, Christian, had

integrated. Charlie Christian revolutionized the electric guitar sound, converting the

guitar from a rhythm instrument playing short, chunky chords with the band, to a

lead, melody instrument playing the type of riffs and lines previously associated

with horns. Christian wasn’t the first to play electric guitar on a jazz record, both

Durham and Floyd Smith had done so earlier in the ‘30s, but his playing was easily

the most influential. There isn’t much point listing guitarists who were influenced

by Christian, it’s pretty much everybody, from his direct acolytes like Barney Kessel,

Herb Ellis and Kenny Burrell, to blues players who took their cues from his soloing

like BB King, T-Bone Walker, and even Chuck Berry.

When Christian came to Oakland with the Goodman band, Saunders followed him

around, to the Club Alabam, to Al Black’s Supper Club, and Jack’s Tavern, hoping to

get a glimpse of him, and maybe to meet him and to get to hear him play. Saunders

recalled that meeting years later in interviews and noted how disturbed he was at

Christian’s excessive drinking, for everyone knew he was ill with tuberculosis.

Blues You Should Know

“Another Pair of Kings”

Bob Frank May 7, 2018

By March of 1942, Charlie Christian was dead at age 25, a tragically early death even

by jazz and blues standards. The tuberculosis and hard living had ended a career

and life of extraordinary promise.

That same year, Saunders King and his band entered a make-shift recording studio

located upstairs of the Sherman Clay Music Store in San Francisco to record the S.K.

Blues, parts 1 & 2 for Rhythm records. The record featured Saunders’ smooth,

velvety vocal style accompanied by his strongly Charlie Christian-influenced lead

guitar playing. The record was a hit, and Saunders soon returned to record more. It

must be noted here that Saunders King’s electric guitar playing on record preceded

T-Bone Walker’s by two years making him effectively the first blues artist to record

with electric guitar.

To my ear, Saunders was an inconsistent player. On some records, his Rhythm

Records recording of Swingin, backed by Lazy Woman Blues being a great example,

Saunders is the equal of any of Christian’s followers. His playing is brilliant. But on

other records not so much.

While King was capable of some great guitar playing, it was really his smooth vocal

delivery that sold the records. By the early 1950s his record companies were

alternating his recordings of blues with recordings of pop songs of the day like Auf

Wiedersehn, Summertime, & Danny Boy, which he actually sang quite well.

King, son of two preachers, had thus far avoided the pitfalls of musician’s night life,

drinking and excessive partying, but a series of mishaps and tragedies led to his

incarceration for drug possession and a period of convalescence and rehabilitation

from heroin addiction. In 1942, King’s first wife committed suicide, and in 1946 he

was shot and seriously injured during an altercation with his landlord. Following

his prison release, King resumed his recording career with Aladdin and Modern

Records and had two more R&B charting hits Empty Bedroom Blues (#9) and Stay Gone

Blues (#14) in 1949 but, after a time, found himself devoting more and more time to

his church and in 1961 gave up his blues career for good.

In 1972, while attending a Tower of Power concert in San Francisco,

guitarist/bandleader Carlos Santana spotted a young woman in the crowd who

caught his fancy. She was Deborah King, Saunders’ daughter with his second wife.

Deborah, a health food store operator at the time, was leery if becoming involved

with another musician because of a previous, abusive relationship with Sly Stone,

but Santana managed to win her over. The two were married in 1973, had three

children and remained married for 34 years before Deborah filed for divorce. Carlos

Santana remarried a few years later and Deborah is now married to actor Carl

Lumbly.

In 1979, while still married to Deborah, Santana brought Saunders King out of

retirement to appear on his Oneness album. That was to be pretty much the end of

Blues You Should Know

“Another Pair of Kings”

Bob Frank May 7, 2018

Saunders King’s musical career. In the 1999 the West Coast blues pioneer had a

crippling stroke and in 2000 passed away at the age of 91 having lived 66 years

longer than his hero, Charlie Christian.

I keep a list in my head of people that I could have seen, should have seen but never

saw. At the top of that list is Jimi Hendrix but that’s another story for another time.

Pretty high up the list though, is our second King for a Day: Earl King.

As much as Saunders King was a Bay area product and a pure West Coast blues

stylist, just as much was Earl King, only he to New Orleans and New Orleans music.

Everything about Earl King spoke to New Orleans; from his clothes to his speech to

his religion to his music, Earl King was pure Big Easy.

Earl was actually born as Earl Silas Johnson IV in New Orleans in 1934. Earl’s father

died when he was young and he was raised by his mother, a large, heavy-set woman,

known in the neighborhood as “Big Chief”.

Like so many other bluesmen, Earl’s first music was made in church but as a young

teenager, he heard Smiley Lewis and knew that the blues was for him. Lewis

became something of a mentor to the fatherless King, much as King was to do later

with another generation of blues players. Another friend at the time,

pianist/bandleader Huey Smith suggested to King that he take up guitar which he

did with a vengeance.

Another of Earl’s heroes was Guitar Slim (Eddie Jones) who had a massive number

one hit in 1951 with The Things I Used To Do, which featured a backup band headed

up by a very young Ray Charles. Earl became so proficient at imitating Slim that

when Slim was badly injured in an auto accident, Earl was recruited to fill him for

road dates. The audiences weren’t told that Earl was a replacement, he was there AS

Guitar Slim. When Slim was able to return to the road, his management continued to

book Earl as Guitar Slim for dates in some of the more out-of-the-way locations

where club patrons were unlikely to know what Slim actually looked like. In one

early publicity photo, King is posing exactly the way Slim did on the one photo of

him that seems to exist.

In 1953, King got the opportunity to record, first for Savoy Records, then Specialty.

In 1955 he had his first major hit with Those Lonely, Lonely Nights, the first of King’s

compositions that has gone on to become a much-covered blues standard. King’s

version sold about 250,000 records and probably would have sold more if Johnny

“Guitar” Watson hadn’t released a version of the same song right about the same

time.

Blues You Should Know

“Another Pair of Kings”

Bob Frank May 7, 2018

Dozens of other releases followed for nearly as many different labels until King

landed on NOLA legend Cosimo Matassa’s Imperial records and in 1960, with the

help of producer Dave Bartholomew, had his second big hit, Come On, pts 1 & 2. This

particular song, also known as Let The Good Times Roll, was later covered by Jimi

Hendrix, and some time after that, by Stevie Ray Vaughn.

In 1962 Bartholomew and King struck gold again with Trick Bag, later covered by

the Meters, Dr. John and dozens of others.

Shortly after Trick Bag, though, King went back to making records for a fairly

bewildering panoply of small, independent, mostly New Orleans-based record labels

like Ace, Home of the Blues, Seminar, Maison Soul, Hensu, Wand, Kansu, Hot Line,

Amy, Post, NOLA, Watch, and even Checker (part of the Chess Records of Chicago

group.)

At one point, during the mid-1960s, King was signed to the Motown record label and

was brought to their Detroit studio where he cut twelve sides that, for some reason,

Motown decided not to release. Somewhere, in the Motown vaults, is a complete

Earl King album, just languishing, waiting for someone to discover it and put it out.

Throughout this time King also wrote songs and produced records for other artists

including Lee Dorsey, Alan Toussaint, the Meters, Willie Tee, Ernie K-Doe and

others. He also wrote the Mardi Gras classic Big Chief for Professor Longhair. Big

Chief was, of course, a tribute to Earl’s mother who was a well-known Mardi Gras

figure.

By the mid 1980s Earl had cemented his reputation as one of the great creative

forces of New Orleans music. He was renowned for his songwriting, his producing,

and just as much for his generosity and willingness to help young, up-an-coming

artists. He would hold court daily in one of his “offices”, which would usually be any

one of a number of the Tastee Donut shops that dot New Orleans. Young

songwriters having problems with song ideas would often seek out King, who would

cheerfully jot down a few ideas for them on a napkin or envelope, just to kick-start

the creative process for them.

King made sure he was easy to spot in the neighborhood as he always dressed

formally, in a colorful suit with plenty of appropriate accessories, and kept his hair

in an elaborate pompadour, about which he was so serious, he took classes at a

beauty school to make sure he could maintain it properly.

In 1986 King met the brothers Nauman and Hammond Scott of the great but sadly

short-lived Black Top Records. The brothers signed Earl to a recording contract

and, perhaps oddly, set him up for a release with the Providence, RI based band

Roomful of Blues, with whom he put out the album, Glazed, a tribute, of sorts, to

King’s Tastee Donuts hangout. For reasons that elude me (because I think the

record is pretty damn good), Glazed was not received well by the critics who

Blues You Should Know

“Another Pair of Kings”

Bob Frank May 7, 2018

seemed to feel that mixing New Orleans with Providence wasn’t a particularly good

idea. Undaunted, the Scott Brothers followed up Glazed with two more releases,

Sexual Telepathy and Hard River to Cross, on which King was backed by a mix of New

Orleans musicians and musicians associated with Antoine’s in Austin, TX.

By 1990 King was beginning to have serious health problems, mostly associated

with diabetes. He continued to perform and to tour, as he was now in demand

world-wide, but he was in constant pain and was drinking heavily to numb the pain.

On April 17, 2003 Earl King died from diabetes complications. As his death occurred

right before the beginning of the Jazz & Heritage Festival, he was given a rousing

sendoff complete with a funeral parade and a service and celebration at the festival.

Nearly every musician in New Orleans, as well as musicians and fans from all over

the world, came to pay tribute to him.

Fortunately for us, Earl’s career lasted long enough for there to be a significant

amount of video footage of him in concert, including a complete performance with

Roomful of Blues at the 1987 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. There is also

footage of him performing with the Radiators, with Johnny Adams, and the Bobby

Radcliff band.

Thus, we’ve added another pair of Kings to the Olympus of blues divinity. In all

fairness, there are other blues artists with the last name of King who deserve some

mention. There’s Bnois King, Ernest King, Eddie King, Bobby King, and Chris Thomas

King, known for his role as Tommy Johnson in Brother Where Art Thou. It might also

be apropos to mention both King Curtis and King Kolax as well.

All hail the Kings of the Blues! However many there may be.

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