Albert King - 1976 - Truckload of Lovin'

Albert King

1976 

Truckload of Lovin'

01. Cold Women With Warm Hearts

02. Gonna Make It Somehow

03. Sensation, Communication Together

04. I'm Your Mate

05. Truckload Of Lovin'

06. Hold Hands With One Another

07. Cadillac Assembly Line

08. Nobody Wants A Loser

Backing Vocals – Dee Ervin, Deniece Williams, Jeanie Arnold (tracks: B2), Julia Tillman, Lani Groves, Maxine Willard

Bass – Charles Rainey, Henry Davis

Congas – King Errisson

Drums – James Gadson

Guitar – Billy Fender, Greg Poree, Wa Wa Watsou

Keyboards – Jerry Peters, Joe Sample

Keyboards – Bert de Coteaux

Guitar, Vocals- Albert King

With Stax Records, Albert King's home for nine years, having gone bankrupt in 1975, the 'Velvet Bulldozer' and his guitar Lucy were out on the street. As King had been a consistent hitmaker for the legendary Memphis company, not least due to the fluid fusion of Blues, Soul and Funk he had pumped out from there, it wasn't long before the master of the eternal bends and trills found a new label.

Kevin Eggers, friend and manager of Townes Van Zandt, reeled the blues master in, and signed him to his Utopia label - later renamed Tomato - in 1976. The sympathetic Eggers went out of his way to provide King with the means to keep the by then 51-year old's career going, but despite his efforts, Albert's tenure at Utopia/Tomato never reached the heights attained at Stax. Both the lack of a sure-shot and consistent backing group a la Booker T. & The M.G.'s or The Bar-Kays, and mid- 70's trends such as disco, Philly Soul and Adult Oriented Rock creeping in, meant that consistency was often missing.

Case in point is Albert King's premier album for Utopia/Tomato, 'Truckload of Lovin'', released in 1976. With Bert De Coteaux producing, and ace R&B session men on board such as James Gadson (drums), Charles Rainey (bass), Joe Sample (keyboards) and Wah Wah Watson (guitar), evidently an attempt was made to stick to the Soul Blues genre that King had perfected in Memphis. And their backing certainly delivers, for the most part; new tastes in style and a penchant for throwing in 'everything but the kitchen sink', however, mars a good deal of the album. As does the fact that King's guitar, Lucy, is, at times, muffled in the mix.

Things start out well enough with the bouncy, uptempo "Cold Women With Warm Hearts", a snappy blues tune by songwriter extraordinaire Sir Mack Rice (another Stax-man). The groove is solid and there's a flavorful horn chart as well, with some nice oldschool boogie piano tinkerings throughout. Albert is in fine vocal form too, and Lucy gets a good chance to shine, especially on the finale. The backing vocals, though, are on the verge of intrusive.

Perhaps the best cut follows with another one of Rice's creations, the country soul work-out "Gonna Make It Somehow", with its steady rolling, chugging rhythm. Again, however, the backing vocals are overbearing.

Rice also composed "Sensation, Communication, Together", but this slow, meandering blues is not only overly long, clocking in at almost 8 minutes, it is severely overproduced, virtually collapsing under its own weight, suffocated by overblown string arrangements and more annoying, chirping backing vocals. While King's vocal is as commanding as ever, Lucy almost struggles to come to the forefront.

Eddie Floyd's "I'm Your Mate" rides the same tasty groove as "Gonna Make It Somehow", and is luckily devoid of aforementioned annoyances, but does include a distorted guitar leit motif that's completely out of place.

The title-track, by Southern Soul songsmith Jimmy Lewis, offers no respite, unfortunately, as this mid-tempo 12 bar blues jam, which does feature Lucy more prominently and has some cool horn charts, is yet again invaded by what sounds like a batallion of cooing and woo-ing background singers.

The nadir is reached with the truly awful "Hold Hands With One Another"; all sense of moderation is gone here, as Albert King is forced into this discofied four-to-the-floor mess complete with overbearing strings and even more backup vocals. Originally an obscure Philly Soul B-side by Terry Collins, this truly ranks as King's worst recording.

Nevertheless, 'Truckload of Lovin'' ends on positive note with two strong selections. In fact, Mack Rice's lamenting "Cadillac Assembly Line", a fantastic bit of Delta Blues storytelling covering the Great Migration, may well be King's greatest achievement at Utopia/Tomato. Set to a haunting, minor-keyed melodic groove, with just the right amount of strings, this is on par with similar pensive, stately offerings as the Stax classics "As the Years Go Passing By" (1968), "I'll Play the Blues for You" (1972) and "Walkin' the Back Streets and Crying" (1974). Here Albert sounds most in his element, both vocally and on his guitar.

"Nobody Wants a Loser", finally, is another Jimmy Lewis concoction, a fine, horn-driven, bouncy blues where Albert and Lucy can breathe more freely than elsewhere on this disc.

King's first effort for Utopia/Tomato is, then, something of a hit and miss affair. Obviously Eggers and producer De Coteaux were still searching for the right sound. On 'Truckload of Lovin'', it's there at times, but more often, it simply is not.