King Curtis – Live At Fillmore West

On “Memphis Soul Stew”, the opening track Live At Fillmore West, King Curtis introduces the band. When it comes time for Cornell Dupree’s introduction, the saxophonist says something about “four level tablespoons of boiling Memphis guitar.” Dupree responds by playing a simple run, nothing fancy, just octaves, sevenths and thirds. It’s a professional distillation of Memphis guitar, and as such sets the tone for this live recording from San Francisco in March 1971. (“King” Curtis Ousley died in August of that year, of stab wounds sustained in a street fight.)

Along with a group of superb musicians that includes Dupree, drummer Bernard Purdie, organist Billy Preston, and bassist Jerry Jemmott, Curtis plays the hits of the day — Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles”, Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”, George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”. As a gesture toward what these musicians perceived as the hippie audience, they tackle Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade Of Pale”.

These are all unexceptionable versions, and it’s fun to hear a great R&B saxophonist squeal through Procol’s famous piece of cut-rate mysticism. As rock history sheds its aura of sublimity and dispenses with the old divisions between what used to be called art and the so-called commercial calculation of an artist such as King Curtis, we can take a record like Live At Fillmore West straight. After all, “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” is a good song, but are the words really necessary?