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Robert Wilonsky

For Your Weekend Listening Pleasure: Eric Clapton Was God at Dallas Convention Center in November '76, But Freddie Was Still King

Robert Wilonsky | August 15, 2010 | 8:00am
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Of all the weekend-listening suggestions I've posted since whenever this started, that Freddie King KZEW revue ranks high on the list -- I've listened to it start-to-finish a dozen times since posting two weeks ago. Hard to see how it gets much better than that, but after sitting through back-to-back Last Waltz viewings on a sleepless Thursday night, this was quite the find last night: King on stage with Eric Clapton at the Dallas Convention Center on November 15, 1976 -- like last week's Joe Walsh offering, yet another King Biscuit Flower Hour broadcast.

The entire concert, which runs close to 80 minutes, is a keeper -- a classic, matter of fact, claim Slowhand fans who point to this broadcast's 12:33-long "Layla" as one of the best takes on that track, like, ever. Other highlights: Dylan songs "Sign Language" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (the latter a bit too tropical for my tastes), Cream's "Badge" and a monster "Blues Power," extended 10 minutes past its original running time.

And then: King joins Clapton on the show's closing number, an epic rendition of "Further On Up the Road," originally a Bobby "Blue" Bland R&B chart-topper that was among Clapton's contributions to The Band's farewell concert. The filmed version with Robbie Robertson is fine -- spirited, slick, slapdash. But Clapton-King is the spark that builds into an inferno at about the four-minute mark; it renders all other versions, and there have been many, inconsequential.

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King died of heart failure at Presbyterian Hospital six weeks after this recording. KNON's Don O. said it two weeks ago, and it bears repeating: "There needs to be a statue of Freddie King in Dallas. It is LONG overdue." Damn right.

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