"Live At The Electric Ballroom, 1974" is an album that starts out with King talking to an interviewer back stage, and doing some things Ive never really heard him do before, like playing acoustic guitar. As Freddie King is playing, inbetween songs he says over and over again "I'm not an acoustic guitar player" after he shows his mastery over songs such as "Dust My Broom" and "That's Alright."
The first electric song on this live album is "Big Legged Woman", but this version is very different from any of King's previous versions, because it has an extended jam session. Big Legged woman is a song that alway's brought a smile to my face with lyrics such as "I love the tip, I love the top, I love you better than a hog loves slop" and will surely bring a smile to any big legged women lovers out there.
The next song "Woman Across The River" has a very peculiar chord change up that I haven't really heard in blues music before, so this really makes this song more of a rock song than anything else. The song shows the influences King had over other guitar players yet to come such as Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and many, many others. King show cases his licks and flies all over the fretboard in ways that typically (excluding Hendrix) only white musicians of that era did.
"Key To The Highway" is a fast paced blues shuffle, with King throwing solo's in everywhere while the bass player thumps like hell. Excluding Freddie King himself, the real star of this song would have to be his bass player who plays intricate licks beneathe Freddie's creating an interesting sound.
"Let The Good Times Roll" is a Jimi Hendrix cover with a funky back beat to it. This is one of those moments where the pupil influenced the master, instead of the other way. On Freddie's version of this song, he slows it down quite a bit, and adds a more funky taste to it, with more solos as well. Roughly half way through, King throws a few vocal harmonies into the mix, and the crowd screams back in acceptance. Another thing King did that I loved was when he yelled out to the crowd "When I yell Let it Roll, you guys yell back Baby let the good times Roll" and of course the crowd played along with it, making it a fun experience for everyone.
The next song "Ain't Nobody's Business" is a slow blues jam in minor. Right from the get go, King starts talking to the audience making the concert very personable. He talks about who he thinks wrote the song, and the big names who showed him the song along the way. Soon after he speaks with the crowd he starts pouring his soul into every note he played. Just relentlessly, putting his soul into the instrument, and out into the crowd. His gospel style singing is also shown in the song, as he tells everyone how one day he cam be rich and the next day poor, and it Ain't Nobody's Business but his own.
The next song is one of my favorites, (and President Obama's) and it is called "Sweet Home Chicago." The song starts out with a slow blues shuffle, with piano soloing over it slowly, as Freddie takes a back seat on his guitar playing in this song while his vocals soar. The slow blues shuffle progresses for quite some time, until King takes over with his seering guitar leads, and the full band kicks in. After the band kicks in, it's about another 6 minutes of pure jamming.
One of the last songs on this great album is an electric version of a song King did earlier in the album, "Dust My Broom" during this song it sounds as if King is playing lead while an unidentifyed 2nd guitarist plays slide in the background. This song is essentially the same thing he did earlier, just electric and with a full band.
The last song on this album is a medley of King's most famous song "Hideaway." This song is an instrumental jam, full of power from everybody in the band. A very more modern version of his early 60's classic. The song soon moves out of Hideaway, and quickly turns to a blues shuffle, and then soon after into another one of Freddie's jamming instrumentals, Boogie Funk. The transitions between each song during this medley are seamless, and to the untrained ear would sound like one giant jam.
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