![]() ![]() "He’d go all out in the streets, blowin’ his horn." Collins made his first instrumental 45, The Freeze, in 1958 for Hayes’ Kangaroo label, encoring on the Great Scott logo with Defrost. ![]() "He used to have a creeper that you work on cars on, a creeper that you lay down on," said Albert. He got the idea for those long mid-song walks from sax wildman Big Jay McNeely. "It gave me a good sound."Ĭollins formed his first band, the Rhythm Rockers, in 1950. "After I got around Gatemouth, I got hooked on that clamp,"he said. "I tried to use a pick, but I don’t know, it seemed like it was a handicap to me." And like his hero, Collins used a capo. "I started out playing with just my fingers,"he said. So I bought me one." That wasn’t Gate’s only input. "When the Fenders first came out, he bought the Esquire Fender. I saw him with a new guitar,"said Collins. "From where I come from out of the south, Houston, Texas, they all would call this Spanish tuning."That meant that chords were all but impossible Albert was by both design and necessity a lead guitarist.He adopted T-Bone and Gatemouth as his idols. But I was listening to John Lee Hooker and Lightnin’ Hopkins at the particular time when I first learned how to start playing guitar."Ĭollins’ unorthodox tuning was radically different. "And I had a very good friend of mine, he’s a music teacher name of Henry Hayes, out of Houston, Texas. "My cousin’s the one that taught me how to play, named Willow Young,"said the late Collins. Piano was his first instrument, but when his music teacher’s path was blocked by rain, young Albert decided to switch to guitar. And Frosty was the tour de force he always played in the midst of those crowds.īorn Octoin a log cabin in Leona, Texas, Collins mostly grew up in Houston’s Third Ward. When he strode through an audience, his axe slung low on his shoulder and trailing at least 100 feet of cord, he glowed with a million watts of incandescence. Thanks to his early 45s, many of which bore frigid titles, it was decreed that his reverb-drenched guitar sound was ‘icy.’ In reality, a hotter electric blues guitarist never existed. They called Albert Collins ‘The Master of the Telecaster,’ and he was. ![]()
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