Albert Collins Live

This "Live from Austin Texas" set is also incredible and features Collins with a superlative Texas-based band. The performance is fantastic and should be heard in 5.1 sound! The set was filmed just about two years before he died, October 1991. He was still a vital performer. This set was originally released from a video tape by Vestapol as "Texas Blues Guitar" in conjunction with the Stephan Grossman Guitar Workshop. "Iceman", "Light's Are Out" and "Head Rag" were included in that DVD transfer. I knew this complete DVD would be great! On this show the picture quality is excellent and the sound fantastic.

Filmed just a year before his untimely death from cancer, this 1992 concert from Montreux finds the great Albert Collins still at the top of his game. With his trademark Fender Telecaster and distinctive finger picking style well to the fore "The Iceman" delivers a set that runs from his early million selling single "Frosty" right up to songs from his final studio album "Iceman".

"Ice Man" or not, Albert was on fire the night of his taping on October 28, 1991. "You just can’t believe how long it took me to get on this show!" he declared, and wasted no time proving why it was long overdue. His performance was a wild ride, and the ACL stage proved too small for his antics, so with his long guitar chord in tow he took off into the audience during his ten-minute-plus finale of "Frosty." He was first and foremost an entertainer, but nonetheless belongs up front in the pantheon of great blues guitarists. He awed at least two generations of young pickers, not the least of whom including Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, who was quoted as saying back in the 60's, "There’s one cat I'm still trying to get across to people…his name is Albert Collins … he’s good … really good."

Hearing Albert Collins' icy guitar sound on disc is exciting, but watching the "master of the Telecaster" burn through a typically blistering set adds a whole other level of appreciation to the experience. He was a consummate showman whose crowd-roaming with a 150-foot guitar cord – before the advent of wireless gear – made him as famous for his live sets as his studio ones. This generous DVD delivers a two-for-one bargain, as it features Collins' first 40-minute show at Montreux in 1979 in addition to the hourlong titular set, the latter also available as a companion audio CD. He is on fire for both shows, although perhaps moving a bit more slowly in 1992, which preceded his untimely death by just a year. As was his norm, Collins stretched songs to their breaking point on-stage, and three of the seven tunes he performed in 1992 break the ten-minute mark. But his playing was so inventive and his stage presence so rousing that nothing seems overly extended or drawn out…….

The Iceman is in remarkable form on this 1992 live date, offering proof positive that his smoldering Texas-style electric blues is ageless. With a set list that spans from his early hit "Frosty" to tracks from his 1991 release, ICEMAN, Albert Collins's stinging technique makes his Telecaster sing out over his no-holds-barred full electric band. A deeply satisfying blues excursion, LIVE AT MONTREAUX was recorded merely a year before Collins's death from cancer, making it a fitting tribute as well as a fine concert recording.

Albert Collins would be gone just a year and a few months after this July 1992 set at Montreux but there was no loss of vitality even at this late date in the blues guitarist's career. The set consists only of seven tracks, but three of those - "Lights Are On (But Nobody's Home)," "Too Many Dirty Dishes," and the über-funky "Put the Shoe on the Other Foot" - clock in at between 11 and over 15 minutes, plenty of time for Collins and his band to kick up some serious dust. On the latter song, bassist Johnny B. Gayden's bass , Bobby Alexis' keys, Marty Binder's drums, and the sax and trumpet of Jon Smith and Steve Howard, respectively, lay down a solid foundation on top of which Collins goes to town with the kind of stinging, mean-ass solo that initially provided him with his reputation as one of the heavyweights.

In Concert features the Iceman, guitarist Albert Collins, live on Germany's 'Ohne Filter - Musik Pur' TV music program taped on October 27th, 1988. The man they call the Master of the Telecaster, or the Iceman, was already one of the biggest US blues stars in the sixties with his funky, jangly guitar sounds. Albert Collins was one of Jimi Hendrix' idols and has since been asked to collaborate in the studio with John Lee Hooker and Gary Moore. On stage, the Texan delighted his audiences with his famed guitar walks.

Collins is never far in spirit from the 1940s and 1950s gin mills of his youth, where he soaked up blues, R&B, country and western, jazz, and all their various amalgams. On this 1983 date he impressively revitalizes his old Texas hit "Don't Lose Your Cool," turns the heat up on Guitar Slim's "Quicksand," and adds newfangled vocal and guitar insinuations to Big Walter Price's "Get to Gettin'."

Albert Collins, "The Master of the Telecaster," "The Iceman," and "The Razor Blade" was robbed of his best years as a blues performer by a bout with liver cancer that ended with his premature death on November 24, 1993. He was just 61 years old. The highly influential, totally original Collins, like the late John Campbell, was on the cusp of a much wider worldwide following via his deal with Virgin Records' Pointblank subsidiary. However, unlike Campbell, Collins had performed for many more years, in obscurity, before finally finding a following in the mid-'80s.