Freddie King  featuring Duke Robillard Page One

Freddie King Electric Blues Guitar with Duke Robillard is a must have!

Texas son, Freddie King A.K.A. the Texas Cannonball is in the must know category of superior guitar players up there with those great few Lone Star luminaries such as Bob Wills of the Texas Playboys, and Buddy Holly of the Crickets, not to mention Johnny Winter (a close friend of Freddie) and SRV.

Unfortunately Freddie passed on quite young. On December 28, 1976 Freddie died from complications of acute ulcers and pancreatitis. Freddie liked to party and drink in particular.

Therefore many of you youngsters may have not have heard of him and wonder why you need to know his licks.

Listen and you will see for yourself that here is a master of blues guitar playing. A player that can basically run rings around most players. While you are staring at your guitar and going oh no! Not the "same old", "same old" pentatonic scale again, studying Freddie will show you many, many cool sounds you can make using these scales. Also included in this guitar lesson is a small pamphlet!

Our Instructor Duke Robillard is low key and very good and plays an older Gold Top Gibson Les Paul with original P-90 pickups. He starts us off learning the Freddie King Instrumental Hideaway in the key of E. Hideaway has been covered by many but Eric Clapton with John Mayalls' Blues Breakers was among the first to cover it and even though it has quite a bit of originality to it its like several songs in one. For example it also has the old TV show Peter Gunn's bass pattern in it that so many others have used... everyone from Dick Dale to SRV himself. It also possesses other cool riffs and licks which my words cant adequately describe.

The next song Duke teaches us is San-ho-zay in the Key of C. This is another great use of the first pentatonic box at the 7th fret position (C) and its study highly recommended. In fact with this instrumental you spend 99% of the song in that one position and Duke shows you myriad useful things you can do there melodically.

The next Freddie King song Duke exposes us to is another instrumental called The Stumble. This song in the key of E is quite a bit more complicated than the previous two and where you will be reaching for your thin as a dime pamphlet. Within, on page 10 of its 12 pages you will find the chords to the Stumble but you will have to pay attention to the lesson maybe more than twice to get this song down properly.

Fourthly we foray in to a brief slow blues lead guitar session. We see a clip of Freddie using a metal thumb and fingerpick on his right hand in some period footage where he is playing some slow, mournful, soulful licks. Then we segue way into Duke showing us how to pay d'em same licks - performing them mostly. He verbally pounds home to us the natural facts concerning the pentatonic scale and its particular position and he uses his forefinger up at the 7th fret to riff in the key of C using pentatonic Box #1 and then he moves up to box two with a verbal clue to us.

Freddie King Page Two