Little Freddie King’s Downhome Cookin’
Little Freddie King doesn’t do things like anybody else. King’s take on the blues comes from a place you won’t find on any maps. The rural McComb, Mississippi, native moved to New Orleans when he was 17, but the country stayed with him. That mix makes for a unique sound that tickles your innards and clouds your mind. You have to run this stuff through your internal translator several times before all the nuances seep through, but it’s well worth the effort.
Fread E. Martin took the diminutive form of the Texas/Chicago blues fusion guitarist in the early ’60s when big Freddie had his big hit “Hide Away.” He says his namesake, who lived a short distance away in New Orleans back then, didn’t mind, and even let him gig with him occasionally, offering him a full time job if he would move to Texas.
This stuff was laid down a while back in two previous albums, but dismissing this as a reissue would be doing King a great disservice. This stuff is too good to be buried, needing to be plowed up and reseeded for new ears. Tracks 1-6 were recorded in 1994 and 1995 at Orleans Records studio in New Orleans and released as Swamp Boogie in 1997. The last five tracks are from King’s 2000 live album Sing, Sang, Sung, recorded at New Orleans’ Dream Palace on Frenchman Street.
King’s covers are as quirky and interesting as his originals. King takes Ray Charles for a ride in the country on his version of “What’d I Say,” emphasizing the samba feel but from a rural standpoint, back porch country pickin’ that falls apart with a glorious tangle of clang and thump at the end.
“Kinky Cotton Fields” is King riffin’ on Lead Belly’s folk classic. King doesn’t waste much time on it, but what he does lay down in the minute-and-48-second track is unlike anybody’s else’s. Crazy Rick Allen’s Wurlitzer floats a churchy vibe over the slinky mambo undercurrent as King picks out a riff like he’s plucking baling wire on a back porch diddley bow nailed to a Delta sharecropper shack.
King’s cover of the Champs’ 1958 hit “Tequila” has nothing in common with anything remotely Asian, but that doesn’t stop King from labeling it “The Great Chinese,” whacking away at it lustily with a Bo Diddley beat and keeping it instrumental save for one hoarse shout of “the great Chinese” near the end.
The Jimmy Reed-flavored “I Use To Be Down” is genuine low-down swamp boogie, King laconically picking just the right sparse notes to keep the mud stirring in his sludgy creation.
“Sing, Sang, Sung” is a glorious mess, like Hound Dog Taylor channeling the Ventures, galloping along trailing chunks of clang in its wake.
King takes on his namesake’s biggest hit, taking “Hide Away” to the country, putting a hitch in the getalong that makes it more of a rural shuffle that trots along where Big Freddie’s glides.
“Bad Chicken” sounds like Bo Diddley in a pluckin’ frenzy, King scratching like a chicken with fleas.
The release of “Swamp Boogie” boosted King’s career, but he was still struggling when Tim and Denise Duffy’s Music Maker Relief Foundation took him under their wing in 1998, helping him with finances and medication before and after his move from New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina in 2005 and his later return. Now 78, King still resides in New Orleans, and still tours and plays despite a near career-ending injury last year when he was tossed over the handlebars of his bicycle he calls his two-wheeled Cadillac, temporarily paralyzing his left hand. He has since recovered, still spreading joyful confuzement with his inimitable style.