A few years later, the summer of 1967, I got a call from a drummer friend. He was playing at a club with an organ player, and they wanted to add a guitar player. When I went to the club, I realized that the organ player was the same dude who had played at Luby’s cafeteria years ago. He now had long hair and a little goatee and called himself Johnny C. I recalled the name “John Clay” from the tip jar at Luby’s. When I asked him, he admitted that it had been him. Now he had a Wurlitzer electric piano stacked on top of a Hammond B3, playing bass with the organ foot pedals, and huffing a harmonica on a rack around his neck. I had never heard him sing before, but he was good enough.  

     He had a big book of songs, but not the great American songbook of the cafeteria. He was doing “Mustang Sally” and “Try a Little Tenderness,” some Beatles and Stones, even a Dylan song with the rack harmonica. He had been in San Francisco doing a hotel lounge gig and met some hippie musicians that exposed him to psychedelics. He said that’s what gave him the confidence to start singing. His keyboard skills enabled him to learn a lot of rock’n’roll songs easily and transition into playing nightclubs instead of cafeterias.  

         John Clay produced an amazing sound with just himself and a drummer, but he had to have an electric guitar player for the current popular music. I had started trying to play like Eric Clapton and Mike Bloomfield, just copying their licks off records, and had been listening to the Doors and Grateful Dead. “Are You Experienced” by Jimi Hendrix had just arrived. Everybody in a band was playing “Purple Haze” and “Foxy Lady.” I had a Fuzz Face and a Wah-Wah pedal, and I was willing to murder a Hendrix cover if it meant a gig in air-conditioning and no more digging postholes to install gaslights for Richardson Gas. 

         The gig at The Rendezvous Room was four 45-minute sets from nine until one. John attempted some Ray Charles and Jerry Lee Lewis, I did “Crossroads” and “Purple Haze,” and we even had some long jams, because the club owner had recently discovered marijuana and liked to groove on my wah-wah action. John Clay was really a wonder. He would play the Wurlitzer, then add some organ stabs, while he provided bass with his feet. Sometimes he would throw in a harmonica lick somewhere just because he could, all while he was singing the song, reading lyrics, and turning pages. We were a rocking little trio, “Johnny C. and the Middlemen.”

         The first time Freddie King came in the Rendevous, I wasn’t sure it was him. When we took a break, the lady bartender let me know that it was indeed Freddie, and he liked our band. “Yes, that was Freddie King, my boyfriend.” She was a full-figured blonde Scandinavian girl with a space between her front teeth. The next time Freddie came to visit, I kicked right into his regional hit “Hideaway,” and played it as close as I could get. He smiled but declined the offer from John to sit in. The next week Freddie stopped in again. When I saw him come through the door, I started playing another of his instrumentals, “San-Ho-Zay.” He gave us that big smile again and put something in the tip jar, but he disappeared fast with the bartender, and they didn’t come back that night. 

         The following week John got a call from Freddie about a gig at the Air Force base at Killeen. It was a private party for a soldier who was related to Freddie. It must have been some kind of favor for the family, because at that point Freddie had already had several hits and was playing some big shows. John made it easy for him, because with him playing bass pedals there was no need to hire a bass player, and we could do an opening set and then bring Freddie on for an hour or so. John also supplied the Shure PA columns and a Fender Twin to use at the Officer’s Club at Fort. Hood. It was my one experience of playing a whole set with Freddie. He used a thumb pick and one metal finger pick, and his whole approach to the guitar was so powerful and unique.  He was so big it made his red ES-335 look smaller. I was awestruck. I had copied all his licks, trying so hard to get it right, but when he played it was so far beyond what I had been trying to learn. His tone was more biting than the records. When he sang “Have you Ever Loved a Woman,” with his high falsetto stabs, I know I heard some of the ladies in the crowd moan. I just played rhythm and stayed out of the way. If it hadn’t been for us playing the opening set, Freddie could have just done the gig as a trio; he sure didn’t need me there when he started playing. It was a relaxed set, and Freddie was having fun and visiting with family. We were finished by ten o’clock, and Freddie said thank you, unplugged and drove away in his white Cadillac. John paid the drummer and I fifty bucks each, and we helped him load his B3 in the trailer and drove back to Dallas, amazed from our experience. John said a few times, “I knew he was good, but I didn’t know he was that good.” 

         It was a couple of years later that I saw Freddie at Arnold and Morgan Music, and I reminded him of the Air Force base gig. I don’t think he ever knew my name, but I could see a flash of recognition when he saw my face; he knew I was another local guitar player in awe of him. He told me he would be sitting in with B. B. King and Bobby Bland at the Ascot Ballroom on Saturday. I had never been to the Ascot, which was previously the Empire. It was a legendary black club that occasionally had “white nights” on Mondays. T-Bone Walker had played there. 

         As we were leaving the store, I asked Freddie if he thought I could get into the show. I guess he realized how much it would mean to me and, without making any promises, he said he would drive through the Jack in the Box parking lot on Ross Avenue on the way to the Ascot. I could follow him, and he would help me find a way in if I didn’t bring anyone with me. I got excited thinking about it, and I told my friend Roger. He was also a huge blues fan and a skilled photographer. He brought his camera and came along with me. We needed to be inconspicuous, but it was tough. We were long-haired hippies in denim and fringe, and the place was packed with black folks dressed up nice, out for a night of grand blues entertainment. The place looked fancier than it was with tablecloths and candles. When I first slipped in the back door, I tried to be as discreet and invisible as possible; I had told Roger to wait in the car until I checked things out. 

         After Freddie got me in the back door, he disappeared into the dressing room. When the show got going, an usher told me to sit on the floor directly in front of the stage with a few other white boys who had showed up at Freddie’s invitation. I was trying to figure out how to get Roger in when I spotted him at the side of the stage with his camera, shooting away. He got some great pictures that night, one that I got B.B. to sign twenty-five years later. It was, of course, an amazing performance, my first time to see B.B. or Bobby Bland live. Close to the end of the show they got Freddie up, making mention that it was his hometown. He threw down heavy on “Have You Ever Loved a Woman,” with B.B. and Bobby smiling approval. 

         After they had done an encore, B.B. looked down at us white boys, sitting at the front of the stage all wide-eyed. “Do any of you young fellas want to come up and play some blues?” I was too scared to even consider taking him up on the offer. Jimmie Vaughan was there, but he didn’t sit in either. Dusty Hill, who would later be a founding member of ZZ Top, was the brave one of us who got up and played some bass, with the great Fred Below on drums. I never got to know Dusty, I was around his brother Rocky a little more. They were in a band called the American Blues, and they dyed their hair blue. This was after Johnny Green and the Greenmen dyed their hair green. A friend of mine spoke with Dusty about sitting in that night and how special it was for him.

         Following the show there were quite a few folks who came up to get autographs from B.B. I needed something for him to sign, and realized I had a letter from the draft board folded in my back pocket. I was enrolled at North Texas State with my college deferment, and I was very opposed to the Vietnam war. My intention was to have B.B. sign the back of the letter, but when the moment came, I presented him with my draft card. He signed it, right across the front. He didn’t realize what it was, he just moved on to the next fan wanting an autograph. I framed the treasure and hung it on my bedroom wall. Years later, when B.B. was our guest on a Delbert McClinton record I was co-producing, I told him the story of him signing my draft card. He laughed but mentioned he had served in the Army during World War II.

     After I moved back to Dallas from LA in ’73, Freddie would sometimes show up to sit in with our band Hot Sauce at Mother Blues. Freddie would arrive in a white Cadillac, always with a young white girl, and he’d sit in for a few songs.  

     One night Wally Wilson, my bandmate in Hot Sauce, invited Freddie up to play. I handed him my red ’51 Tele that had palm-pedals behind the bridge. The pedals bend the B and G string a whole step up and achieve a steel guitar effect. The band kicked off a shuffle, and Freddie fell in, throwing the strap over one huge shoulder the way he did. I saw him struggling with the palm pedals, probably thinking it was a Bigsby tailpiece-vibrato gone wrong. As I came to his rescue with my 335, he handed my Tele back to me, saying, “Son, you must have made this one yourself.”

         In December of 1976 I went to the Showco sound company Christmas party in Dallas. It was the last time I saw Freddie. He died a few days later at the age of 42. His cause of death was pancreatitis, Freddie was a hard partier. Sometimes after gigs at Mother Blues, Freddie would be in on some late-night poker games upstairs. I never had the money or the skills to get involved in the game, but I hung out a little just to be around him. The first time I ever had a Bloody Mary was because I saw Freddie drinking one. He said it had “good food” in it. 

          Freddie’s style is built into every Texas blues guitar player, it’s the foundation. Copying his instrumentals was a starting place for me and so many others. I treasure the memories of every time I was around him.