Born in
Leona,
Texas,
Collins was a distant
relative of
Lightnin' Hopkins and grew up learning about
music and playing guitar. His family moved to
Houston, Texas when he was seven.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, he absorbed the
blues sounds and styles from Texas,
Mississippi and
Chicago. His style would soon envelop these
sounds. He regularly named
John Lee Hooker and organist
Jimmy McGriff, along with Hopkins,
Guitar Slim and
Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown as major influences
on his playing.He formed his first
band in 1952 and two years later was the
headliner at several blues
clubs in Houston. By the late 1950s Collins
began using
Fender Telecasters. He later chose a "maple-cap"
1966 Custom
Fender Telecaster with a
Gibson PAF Humbucker in the neck position and a 100 watt
RMS
silverfaced 1970s Fender Quad Reverb combo as
his main equipment, and developed a unique sound
featuring minor tunings, sustained notes and an
"attack" fingerstyle. He also frequently used a
capo on his guitar, particularly on the 5th,
7th, and 9th frets. He primarily favored an "open
F-minor" tuning (low to high: F-C-F-Ab-C-F). In the
booklet from the CD
Ice Pickin, it was stated that Albert tuned
to a "D minor D-A-D-F-A-D" Tuning. He played without
picks using his thumb and first finger. Collins
credited his unusual tuning to his cousin, Willow
Young, who taught it to him.
Collins began
recording in 1960 and released
singles, including many
instrumentals such as the million selling
"Frosty".
on Texas-based labels like Kangaroo and Hall-Way. A
number of these singles were collected on the album
The Cool Sounds Of Albert Collins on the TCF
Hall label (later reissued on the
Blue Thumb label as Truckin’ With Albert
Collins. In the spring of 1965 he moved to
Kansas City,
Missouri and made a name for himself there. This
was also where he met his future wife, Gwendolyn.
Many of Kansas City's
recording studios had closed by the mid 1960s.
Unable to record, Collins moved to
California in 1967. He lived in
Palo Alto,
CA for a short time before moving to
Los Angeles,
CA and played many of the
West Coast venues popular with the
counter-culture. In early 1969 after playing a
concert with
Canned Heat, members of this band introduced him
to
Liberty Records. In appreciation, Collins’ first
album title, Love Can Be Found Anywhere, was
taken from the
lyrics of "Refried Hockey Boogie". Collins
signed and released his first
album on
Imperial Records, a sister
label, in 1968.
Collins remained in California for another five
years, and was popular on double-billed shows at
The Fillmore and the
Winterland. He was signed to
Alligator Records in 1978 and recorded and
released Ice Pickin'. He would
record seven more albums with the label, before
being signed to
Point Blank Records in 1990.
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Collins
toured the
United States,
Canada,
Europe and
Japan. He was becoming a popular blues musician
and was an influence for
Coco Montoya,
Robert Cray,
Gary Moore,
Debbie Davies,
Stevie Ray Vaughan,
Jonny Lang,
Susan Tedeschi,
Kenny Wayne Shepherd,
John Mayer and
Frank Zappa.
In 1983, when he won the
W. C. Handy Award for his album Don't Lose
Your Cool, which won the award for Best Blues
Album of the Year. In 1987, he shared a
Grammy for the album Showdown! (released
in 1986) which he recorded with
Robert Cray and
Johnny Copeland. The following year his solo
release Cold Snap was also nominated for a
Grammy.
In 1987,
John Zorn enlisted him to play lead guitar in a
suite he had composed especially for him, entitled
"Two-Lane Highway," on Zorn's album
Spillane .
Alongside
George Thorogood and the Destroyers and
Bo Diddley, Collins performed at
Live Aid in 1985, playing "The
Sky Is Crying" and "Madison Blues", at the
JFK Stadium. He was the only
black blues
artist to appear.
Collins was invited to play at the 'Legends Of
Guitar Festival' concerts in
Seville,
Spain at the
Expo in 1992, where amongst others, he played
"Iceman", the title track from his final studio
album.
He made his last visit to
London,
England in March 1993.
After falling ill at a show in
Switzerland in late July 1993, he was diagnosed
in mid August with
lung cancer which had
metastasized to his
liver, with an expected survival time of four
months. Parts of his last album, Live '92/'93,
were recorded at shows that September; he died
shortly afterwards, in November at the age of 61. He
was survived by his wife, Gwendolyn.
He is interred at the Davis Memorial Park,
Las Vegas,
Nevada.
Collins will be remembered not only for the
quantity of quality blues music that he put out
throughout his career that has inspired so many
other blues musicians, but also for his live
performances, where he would frequently come down
from the stage, attached to his amplifier with a
very long cord, and mingle with the audience whilst
still playing.
He was known to leave clubs while still playing, and
continue to play outside on the sidewalk, even
boarding a city bus in Chicago while playing,
outside of a club called Biddy Mulligan’s (the bus
driver stayed at the bus stop until Collins got
off).
In Collins'
cameo appearance in the
film
Adventures in Babysitting,
he insisted to
Elisabeth Shue that "nobody leaves this place
without singin' the blues", forcing the children to
improvise a song before escaping.
Collins has influenced many artists and did
collaborations with
Ronnie Wood,
Jimmy Page,
Robert Cray,
Keith Richards,
Jeff Beck,
Stevie Ray Vaughan,
B.B. King and
Eric Clapton.
Another instance of Collins' humorous stage
presence was recounted in the
film documentary, Antones: Austin's Home of
the Blues. Collins left the building, still
plugged in and playing. Several minutes after
Collins returned to the stage, a
pizza delivery man came in and gave Collins the
pizza he had just ordered when he left the building.
Collins had gone to Milto's Pizza & Pasta through an
adjoining alley and ordered while he was still
playing.