Similar to how Buck Owens’ “Buckaroo” has become an instrumental staple to country guitar pickers and Dick Dale’s “Misirlou” to surf-guitar players, nobody can call themselves a blues guitarist without first learning Freddy “The Texas Cannonball” King’s signature tune “Hide Away” from 1961’s Let’s Hide Away and Dance Away. To call King’s sophomore album influential would be an understatement — it practically gave birth to Stevie Ray Vaughan and the slow cooking “San-Ho-Zay” put the lovely city of San Jose, California on the map seven years before Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick. Along with the skip-a-long “Sen-Sa-Shun,” the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia used to cite “San-Ho-Zay” and “Hide Away” as his three favorite Freddy King songs to play. “The Stumble” is another standout cut that has inspired and been covered by the likes of blues luminaries such as Eric Clapton Jeff Beck, Peter Green, Dave Edmunds, Luther Allison and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Listening to Let’s Hide Away and Dance Away also reveals that King was one of the very first to inject the blues with memorable pop hooks.
