Saunders King

Saunders King, a trailblazing guitarist in R&B, scored his initial success during 1942 via the track “S.K. Blues.” Born the son of a preacher, he performed gospel numbers inside his father’s Oakland congregation and acquired skills on piano as well as banjo and ukulele. Guitar work began for him in 1938, which soon led to vocal duties with the Southern Harmony Four on an NBC outlet in San Francisco. Blues became his central focus, and “S.K. Blues” turned into a major success that contained one of the earliest recorded instances of electric blues guitar in the manner that would shortly define T-Bone Walker. Releases appeared on the Aladdin, Modern, and Rhythm labels. Although poised to exert stronger influence amid the rising West Coast blues community of the 1940s, King encountered repeated personal setbacks: his wife’s suicide in 1942, a severe injury inflicted by a .45-caliber pistol discharged by his landlord in 1946, and incarceration at San Quentin for heroin possession. He stepped away from performing in 1961 to devote himself to church activities. A short return occurred in 1979 when he contributed guitar to Oneness, the album by his son-in-law Carlos Santana. A stroke in 1999 left him partly paralyzed, and he died at age 91 on August 31, 2000, at his Oakland residence.