{"product_id":"albert-king-the-velvet-bulldozer-paperback","title":"Albert King: The Velvet Bulldozer - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eSimon Godfrey\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAlbert King held his guitar wrong.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLeft-handed, he played a right-handed Flying V flipped upside down - never restrung, strings running backward, bends pulled in a direction no method book ever taught. It wasn't a style choice. It was what a poor kid in Depression-era Arkansas did when there was no money for the \"correct\" instrument and no one around to say otherwise.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat accident became one of the most stolen sounds in American music.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBorn on a Mississippi cotton plantation in 1923, King spent two decades on the edges of the blues before Memphis's Stax Records - a soul label with no blues artists on its roster - paired him with a house band tight enough to let a single bent string carry an entire bar. The record they made together, \u003cem\u003eBorn Under a Bad Sign\u003c\/em\u003e, became a songbook other people got famous from. Eric Clapton built Cream's version of the title track out of it. Jimi Hendrix studied King from the crowd. A teenage Stevie Ray Vaughan begged to sit in one night in Austin and got a lesson he carried for the rest of his life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKing spent the next twenty-five years watching younger, richer guitarists sell out arenas playing variations of a vocabulary he'd invented - and waiting for an industry that was in no hurry to say his name. It finally did, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, twenty-one years after he was gone to hear it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Velvet Bulldozer\u003c\/em\u003e is the story of how a \"wrong\" way of holding a guitar became one of the rightest sounds in American music - and how long it took the world to catch up.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKnow the story. Hear the blues differently.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 108\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.26 x 8.5 x 5.5 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e August 24, 2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46368940359815,"sku":"9798235137660","price":28.78,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0601\/2623\/2711\/files\/MHhcMZojlO9798235137660.webp?v=1793332300","url":"https:\/\/booksby.splitshops.com\/products\/albert-king-the-velvet-bulldozer-paperback","provider":"Books by splitShops","version":"1.0","type":"link"}