Pressed at Quality Record Pressings in Salina, Kansas

Cutting engineer — Kevin Gray

If you want the real blues, baby, you’d better call Little Freddie King. Normally only seen once a month at B.J.’s, a lounge located in the lowest bowels of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, where he shares floor space with a pool table and various carpet remnants, McComb, Mississippi’s ambassador of the blues has been working out of the Crescent City for decades.

The minute Freddie straps on his guitar and strikes up his gnarled chord and drummer “Wacko” Wade makes his presence known with a definitive cymbal crash, this lean, mean, swampy aggregation of gut-bucket wild men transforms the poshest of venues into a back-o-town beer joint.

Born in McComb, Mississippi, in 1940, Fred Martin grew up playing alongside his blues guitar-picking father, then rode the rails to New Orleans during the early fifties where he crossed paths with itinerant South Louisiana blues men such as Polka Dot Slim and Boogie Bill Webb, whose unique country and urban blues styles would influence his own. Honing his guitar chops at notorious joints like the Bucket of Blood (which he later immortalized in song), he jammed and gigged with Bo Diddley and John Lee Hooker and also played bass for Freddie King during one of the guitarist’s stints in New Orleans. People began comparing the two musicians’ styles, hence Martin’s stage name. While well-versed in a variety of styles, nowadays, Little Freddie sounds a lot more like his cousin Lightnin’ Hopkins – albeit after a three-day corn liquor bender.