Little Freddie King

Fat Possum has released (finally!) its first CD by Little Freddie King. As usual, Fat Possum offers a couple of free samples from the record. If you doubt that LFK is the real deal, then read this story about how drinking (and other things) almost ended his life:

Freddie's drinking almost brought an end to his playing days.

"I went to a bar and grabbed a fifth of gin and knocked about half down. So I left and stopped at another bar and I said, 'Give me a drink'. I pulled the money out of my pocket and pulled the roll out. This woman on the bar knowed my wife well. She [called her and] said, 'You better get down here quick. Your husband is in here buying everybody drinks'. I didn't even know she had called."

Freddie made his way home bar by bar until a woman asked him for a beer and another bartender called his wife. "I was so high. You don't know what you're seeing and you don't know what your hearing. I turned back around and went back in and bought her the beer and then my wife had come in on the other side and was sitting by the record machine against the wall."

"And when I turned to go back out the door, she tapped me on the back. When I turned around, she stabbed me through the shoulder and... the arm and then I grabbed her and I had a bottle of wine and she hit my hand against the wall and busted the wine. I went to bring my dutch [knife] out and went to cut her but by being drunk, I hit the wall and she run. I couldn't catch her."

"She locks the door [on their house] and put chairs against the door and she was upstairs. The gun was upstairs and she got my .38 magnum and she came down, she came down shootin'. She shot me three times."

Freddie still has a bullet in his spine and a doctor finally convinced him that he would die if he didn't stop drinking.