Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.
Albert King is one of the undisputed Kings of the Blues, but he didn’t get to that point overnight. It took ten years, hundreds of nightclub gigs, numerous day jobs, and one name change (an attempt to present himself as a relative of B.B. King) before King was able to record his first album, The Big Blues, in 1962, for the appropriately named King Records. After that, it was another five years of hard graft on the road before King finally settled into his home-for-life, Stax Records. At Stax, King formed a formidable partnership with Booker T. & The MGs, with whom he finally recorded his second album, Born Under A Bad Sign, in 1967.
It’s not entirely clear whose idea it was for Albert to record an album of Elvis covers for this, his sixth album on Stax, but the decision was an inspired one. Since Elvis’s brand of rock ‘n’ roll in part derived from the blues, Albert would simply be “bringing it all back home.”
Continue reading »