The Definitive Albert King

The Definitive Albert King follows 15 years worth of recordings — from 1961 to 1975, plus a final track from 1984 — by a bluesman who'd spent the early part of his career playing to an African-American fan base in the roadhouses and theaters of the chitlin' circuit. But by the latter half of the 1960s, the genre "was now attracting the rapt interest of young white listeners, their sensibilities opened wide by the muscular, in-your-face blues rock of the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and Jimi Hendrix," says roots music historian Bill Dahl in his liner notes for the collection. "These new converts were gravitating to the best the idiom had to offer. No single blues guitarist made a more stunning impact during that tumultuous timeframe than Albert King."