DougGuy
08-23-2018, 12:41 PM
It is with great sadness that I post information out of Nashville, Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Ed King passed away at his home in Nashville yesterday, August 22nd, 2018.
Ed King was a founding member of the 60's psychedelic band Strawberry Alarm Clock which charted the hit song "Incense And Peppermints" but Ed is best known for his iconic intro to the song "Sweet Home Alabama" for which he used a Fender Stratocaster guitar, and he played with a seashell picked up off the beaches of NJ. This unique picking technique gives all of the early Skynyrd classics their identifiable chirps and squeals which permeate all of the songs that they recorded up until the time Ed left the band in 1975.
Ed was most recently involved in writing a book about his experiences with Lynyrd Skynyrd, it was finished and in the proofreading stage, so I eagerly await publication of this book.
You can go on Facebook and find quite a few videos of Ed, playing solo and showcasing some of the guitar parts he contributed to Lynyrd Skynyrd classics, his playing and sense of timing is genius, Skynyrd layered 3 guitar parts into a seamless sound that was their trademark. Ed often played counterpoint to Allen and Gary, the two of them using mostly Gibson guitars cranked through Marshall or Peavey amps, where Ed often used a Gibson SG or mostly a Fender Stratocaster because it contrasted with the dirtier sound of the Gibsons.
Ed said of the 1972 Fender Stratocaster guitar he used to record Sweet Home Alabama, that he HATED that guitar, the pickups on it sucked and he had to work really hard to get a decent sound out of it.
He also came up with the iconic intro, AND the solos, in a dream. He woke up and the parts were in his head and they put the song together from that. The neat thing about the song is that it is written in the key of G, but the solos are played in the key of D. Al Kooper (Skynyrd's producer at the time) heavily criticized Ed for this and steadfastly refused to record it this way. It's a good thing that Ronnie Van Zant ran that band, just think of what we might have been deprived of...
R.I.P. Ed King 9-14-1949 8-22-2018
Ed is survived by his wife Sharon Brock King, and by his son Kelton Caleb King, who was in 2015 Chief Petty Officer with United States Navy Seal Team 2.
Ed King was a founding member of the 60's psychedelic band Strawberry Alarm Clock which charted the hit song "Incense And Peppermints" but Ed is best known for his iconic intro to the song "Sweet Home Alabama" for which he used a Fender Stratocaster guitar, and he played with a seashell picked up off the beaches of NJ. This unique picking technique gives all of the early Skynyrd classics their identifiable chirps and squeals which permeate all of the songs that they recorded up until the time Ed left the band in 1975.
Ed was most recently involved in writing a book about his experiences with Lynyrd Skynyrd, it was finished and in the proofreading stage, so I eagerly await publication of this book.
You can go on Facebook and find quite a few videos of Ed, playing solo and showcasing some of the guitar parts he contributed to Lynyrd Skynyrd classics, his playing and sense of timing is genius, Skynyrd layered 3 guitar parts into a seamless sound that was their trademark. Ed often played counterpoint to Allen and Gary, the two of them using mostly Gibson guitars cranked through Marshall or Peavey amps, where Ed often used a Gibson SG or mostly a Fender Stratocaster because it contrasted with the dirtier sound of the Gibsons.
Ed said of the 1972 Fender Stratocaster guitar he used to record Sweet Home Alabama, that he HATED that guitar, the pickups on it sucked and he had to work really hard to get a decent sound out of it.
He also came up with the iconic intro, AND the solos, in a dream. He woke up and the parts were in his head and they put the song together from that. The neat thing about the song is that it is written in the key of G, but the solos are played in the key of D. Al Kooper (Skynyrd's producer at the time) heavily criticized Ed for this and steadfastly refused to record it this way. It's a good thing that Ronnie Van Zant ran that band, just think of what we might have been deprived of...
R.I.P. Ed King 9-14-1949 8-22-2018
Ed is survived by his wife Sharon Brock King, and by his son Kelton Caleb King, who was in 2015 Chief Petty Officer with United States Navy Seal Team 2.