Influenced by Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, and others together with jump-blues saxophonist Louis Jordan, Freddie King was an integral piece of Chicago’s blues scene within the Sixties.

King and his mom lived in Gilmer, Texas, the place at age six he began studying country-blues on a general-store Roy Rogers “stencil” guitar with assist from her and an uncle. In 1949, they moved to the Windy Metropolis, the place 16-year-old Freddie rapidly endeared himself to Otis Rush, “Magic Sam” Maghett, Buddy Man, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Hound Canine Taylor, and Muddy Waters. By the mid ’50s, he was a session guitarist for native report labels Parrott and Chess whereas additionally enjoying with Earlee Payton’s Blues Cats and the Little Sonny Cooper Band. In ’56, he recorded a single on El-Bee Information, then started fronting his personal combo and creating his guitar-driven blues model in golf equipment on the West Facet.

For the twenty years that adopted, King combined rural and concrete musical influences whereas serving to blaze the path to blues-rock. Famous in guitar historical past for his string bends, vocalesque vibrato, he scored with each vocal and instrumental albums, Freddy King Sings and Let’s Disguise Away And Dance Away With Freddy King (each 1961) and Offers You A Bonanza Of Instrumentals (’65). His music was praised and his model emulated by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmie Vaughan, Peter Inexperienced, Mick Taylor, Jeff Beck, Lonnie Brooks, Billy Gibbons, Luther and Bernard Allison, Johnny Winter, and Eric Clapton, who lined “Disguise Away” on the 1966 John Mayall Blues Breakers album.

Early in his profession, King performed the ’54 Les Paul goldtop pictured on the duvet of Freddy King Sings; it impressed Clapton to purchase a Les Paul, although he inadvertently acquired a ’Burst. King moved to Gibson semi-hollows within the mid ’60s, then by means of the late ’60s and early ’70s was most frequently seen on a ’68 ES-345 (VG, January ’18), furthering his right-hand method with a plastic thumbpick and metallic decide on his index finger.

Using excessive by means of the early ’70s, King’s three albums for Shelter Information, Getting Prepared…, Texas Cannonball, and Lady Throughout the River, offered effectively as his performances drew spectacular crowds of blues and rock followers. In ’73, he stepped up from the 345 to a brand new 355 earlier than signing with RSO Information and recording Burglar with an all-star forged of backing gamers together with Clapton and his band on “Sugar Candy.” In ’75 got here Bigger Than Life, a mostly-live album compiled from three performances at Armadillo World Headquarters.

King toured the U.S. by means of ’76, at the same time as coronary heart illness started to noticeably put on him down. He died that December 29, simply 42 years outdated. In 1993, Texas Governor Ann Richards declared September 3 “Freddie King Day,” and in 2012 he was inducted to the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame.

This ES-355 was King’s fundamental guitar in his closing years. It resurfaced in March after the widow of its proprietor, John Beudel, brokered it by means of Carter Classic, in Nashville.

“She had no documentation,” mentioned Jon Roncolato, the store’s normal manger on the time. “So we went on a seek for provenance.”

Given the guitar’s distinct put on – particularly on the neck since King’s guitars are recognized for the injury attributable to the jewerly on his fingers – and ample video from the interval, “We have been fairly assured it was, the truth is, his guitar,” Roncolato mentioned. “However we would have liked extra proof, and as we continued to place collectively the story, the guitar gods acquired to meddling.”

That “meddling” occurred on March 21, when an worker, not figuring out the guitar’s historical past, listed it on the market on the shop’s web site.

Late that night, managing accomplice Kim Sherman was manning the web site chat when somebody posted a message.

“They have been asking for a serial variety of an inventory,” Sherman mentioned. “I checked out what they have been viewing and out of the blue realized that the ES-355 had gone reside on the location for $9,500. I shared the serial quantity, then put it on maintain.”

The poster was Tom Van Hoose, who has been a part of the archtop/jazz-guitar scene because the ’70s, alongside the way in which amassing greater than 400 classic devices and authoring The Gibson Tremendous 400: Artwork of the Effective Guitar. In ’91, he opened Van Hoose Classic Devices, in Dallas.

“I examine the Carter Classic web site often as a result of I’ve purchased some good guitars from them,” he mentioned. And whereas any 355 would’ve piqued his curiosity, as soon as he noticed this one, he mentioned, “I rapidly went to my archives.”

Chatting with Sherman the following day, Van Hoose confirmed what Beudel’s widow informed workers at Carter’s, together with how, after King’s passing, the guitar had been bought from his household by Charley Wirz, proprietor of the famend Charley’s Guitar Store and a legend amongst Texas gamers and guitarheads; along with John Brinkman and Danny Thorpe, he staged the primary Larger Southwest Classic Guitar Present (a.okay.a. the “Dallas guitar present”) in 1978.

Wirz died unexpectedly in the course of the NAMM present in February, 1985. Being a detailed pal, Van Hoose helped his widow, Carol, decide the destiny of the shop and Charley’s guitar assortment. The method concerned recording all serial numbers.

“A couple of 12 months earlier than Charley died, I’d visited their residence and he confirmed me his thinline assortment; he had 41 – all classic 335s, 45s, 55s, and a blond Sheraton,” he mentioned. “The Freddie King guitar was there, and I bear in mind tinkering with it. It was tough, but it surely was cool, and Charley informed me the stor y about how he acquired it from Freddie’s household.”

Beudel, a blues fanatic and guitar collector in Ohio, acquired the 355 from Wirz’s property within the ’80s. He died in December of 2021.

After Van Hoose helped her acquire full confidence within the guitar’s provenance, Sherman offered it with one name to a longtime buyer (going again to her days at Cotten Music) who’s a religious Freddie King fan.

This text initially appeared in VG’s October 2023 problem. All copyrights are by the writer and Classic Guitar journal. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.