Albert King

• Albert's bends go downward (pulling the string toward the floor) — practise this specifically
• His neck position (thumb over the top) adds a warmer tone from dampening the neck resonance
• Wide, slow vibrato after bends — the note groans rather than shimmers
• Minor pentatonic in the Albert King "box" (high-register minor pentatonic) is his home
• Play behind the beat with heavy attack — the groove is in the delayed delivery
• Clean Fender amp with natural speaker saturation at higher volume is the foundation
• Upstroke bends and note attacks come from the unique right-to-left string geography
• Study "Born Under a Bad Sign" and "Crosscut Saw" for the definitive vocabulary
• SRV studied Albert King obsessively — the cross-hand bend technique is clearly inherited

Albert King was left-handed but played a right-handed guitar upside down and unstrung in reverse — meaning his bends went downward rather than upward. This physical quirk gave his string bends a unique, scooped sound that seemed to pull notes down toward the floor, influencing SRV, Hendrix and virtually every blues player who heard it.