One of the three “Kings of the Blues” (along with B.B. King and Freddie King, none of whom were related to each other), Albert King was massively influential in his scene, especially among his labelmates at Stax Records in the Sixties, but largely eluded commercial success. His greatest hit on the pop charts, 1968’s “Cold Feet”, only reached up to #67. However, he performed considerably better on the R&B charts, with a dozen top one hundred songs across twenty years and his album sales were usually stronger than his singles.
King died of a heart attack at his home in Memphis, Tennessee. “The Velvet Bulldozer” was 69 years old. At his funeral, B.B. King said of Albert that “he was my brother, not in blood, but in blues.”
