Freddie King Birthplace — Gilmer, Texas

Freddie King was born on September 3, 1934, in Gilmer in Upshur County, Texas, and became one of the Three Kings of the blues — alongside B.B. King and Albert King — whose electric guitar style was the direct foundation of British blues-rock. King's Federal Records instrumentals of the early 1960s — 'Hide Away,' 'San-Ho-Zay,' 'The Stumble,' 'Wash Out' — were the records that Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and Mick Taylor learned note-for-note; 'Hide Away' was the calling card of virtually every British blues guitarist of the era. His playing combined T-Bone Walker's smoothness with a raw, attacking quality that was all his own.

King moved to Chicago as a teenager and absorbed the West Side electric blues scene before his Texas roots and a harder-edged attack distinguished him from his Chicago contemporaries. He signed to Federal/King Records in Cincinnati and his early 1960s recordings were hits on the R&B chart and studied obsessively by white guitarists in Britain and America. Eric Clapton named his first band after King's 'Hideaway'; Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac cited King as his primary influence.

Gilmer, in east Texas, has a Texas historical marker acknowledging King's birth. He is more associated with Dallas and Chicago in his adult life. King died on December 28, 1976, in Dallas, of heart failure and peptic ulcers, at only 42 — his death robbed the blues of one of its most vital performers at a time when the blues revival was finally bringing him wider recognition.