Meet the new boss just as good as the old boss. Consider the In Session CD/DVD set, featuring guitar greats Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King, a meeting of teacher and pupil who became contemporaries, or a pure blues man facing off a new guitar God. The story goes that King wasn’t going to play this show because he didn’t know who Stevie Ray Vaughan was — he only knew him as “little Stevie,” a skinny kid he let sit in when he played in Texas. Besides the music, it’s moments like these that make In Session such a prize.
From this 1983 Canadian In Session TV special, the two men move through a chunky “Pride and Joy,” before grooving through a sweet guitar duet with a little organ backing from Tony Llorens on “Call It Stormy Monday.” The CD’s “Blues At Sunrise” goes a little long as King talks about recording the song with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix back in the day, pushing Vaughan into some Hendrix-like licks that are not to be believed!
For the most part, King sings on In Session, while SRV plays sideman, taking leads, pull-offs and quick riffs when they open up, but mostly playing polite with one of his heroes. The DVD features some different performances not available on the CD, including “Texas Flood,” “Born Under A Bad Sign” and “I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts Of Town..” To stir things up, the companion CD has some tunes left off the DVD, like “Ask Me No Questions,” “Blues At Sunrise,” “Overall Junction” and “Matchbox Blues.” With both guitar greats long deceased, In Session, complete in either format, is an excellent historical document of a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
