Albert King

Compilation Reviews:

Born Under a Bad Sign & Other Hits

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Born Under a Bad Sign & Other Hits

1. Born Under a Bad Sign 2. Crosscut Saw 3. Down Don’t Bother Me 4. Funk-Shun 5. Kansas City 6. Oh, Pretty Woman 7. I Almost Lost My Mind 8. Personal Manager 9. Overall Junction 10. Laundromat Blues

Since I began to crawl

Issued in the early 2000s on the Rhino-owned label Flashback Records, specializing on releasing out-of-print material somehow owned by Rhino’s parent company Warner (at some point WEA: Warner–Elektra–Atlantic), Rhino in turn signed some kind of deal with Atlantic – who cares, I don’t understand any of the details). Then this compilation reappeared a couple of years later on the independent label Collectables, also focusing on reissuing material by larger labels like Atlantic and others. Collectables did some good things and issued some sensible collections of otherwise inconveniently available music. This is not such a case.

This is a cheapo compilation featuring most tracks of King’s classic album Born Under a Bad Sign (1967), but missing three tracks for no reason: „The Hunter“, „As the Years Go Passing By“ and „The Very Thought of You“. Its supposed reason for existence is to replace these album tracks with the (rare) 1966-single featuring “Oh, Pretty Woman” and “Funk-Shun”. But the single has been more reasonably published on compilations like The Ultimate Collection, which is the best Albert-King-collection to this day (on: Rhino 1993 – and note that Rhino does own Flashback Records…) – so why bother with this CD? This is just a mid-2000 attempt (CD-sales good-bye!) to jettison material. Skip! The music is sweet though, get Rhino’s The Ultimate Collection.