Albert King, the Velvet Bulldozer, was born Albert Nelson in Indianola, Mississippi, in 1923, picked cotton as a child in Arkansas, and built his first instrument from a cigar box, a piece of a bush, and a strand of broom wire. Left-handed and unable to find a left-handed guitar, he simply flipped a right-handed instrument upside down without restringing it, a choice that inverted the entire fretboard and shaped a bending technique that Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix would study but never quite replicate.

This episode follows his audacious 1953 move to Gary, Indiana, where he adopted the name King and billed himself as B.B. King's brother, his 1961 hit Don't Throw Your Love on Me So Strong with Ike Turner on piano, and the 1966 signing with Stax Records that paired him with Booker T. and the MGs on Born Under a Bad Sign. We trace his crossov ...