Eric Gales pays tribute to his brother Little Jimmy King

More than twenty years after the passing of Manuel Gales, aka Little Jimmy King, his younger brother Eric Gales is releasing an album entirely dedicated to his repertoire. Produced by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith, A Tribute to LJK brings together a prestigious lineup of guests and rekindles the memory of a guitarist too often forgotten. The album — whose cover evokes the look of a movie biopic — is out on August 29, but you’ll have to wait until October 24 to have the vinyl or CD in your hands.

A brotherly tribute

For Eric Gales, the goal is simple: bring this repertoire back into the spotlight with his trademark energy and the support of carefully chosen guests.

“I wanted people to remember who he was and to hear these songs the way I hear them today” — Eric Gales.

Ten tracks, mostly written by Little Jimmy King, make up this record conceived as a gesture of passing the torch. Eric Gales pours in his own energy without ever losing sight of the soul of the original compositions. The album opens with a short spoken introduction by Danuel Gales, LJK’s twin brother, placing the project in its family context and recalling the journey of Manuel, the central figure of this long-gestating project.

High-profile guests

To serve this repertoire, Eric Gales called on top-tier partners. Buddy Guy (omnipresent on many releases right now!) and Roosevelt Collier lend their touch to Somebody, while Christone “Kingfish” Ingram injects all his fire into Rockin’ Horse Ride. Joe Bonamassa appears on two tracks — Don’t Wanna Go Home and It Takes a Whole Lotta Money — the latter alongside Josh Smith.

Each guest adds fresh colors without betraying the spirit of the songs. The result strikes a fine balance between fidelity and vitality.

Musically, A Tribute to LJK moves between muscular mid-tempos, tight blues-rock, Memphis-rooted shuffles, and emotion-laden ballads. As always with Eric Gales, the sound is powerful yet retains the organic texture that characterized Little Jimmy King, who played for many years alongside his brother.

The arrangements at times recall the Stax universe, with a supple rhythm section and assertive soul-blues riffs. There are also darker moods, as on Waiting for the Train, which evokes swamp blues, and classics revisited at a brisker tempo, like Trouble in Mind.

An album that gets straight to the point

A Tribute to LJK doesn’t chase forced reinvention. Its intention is crystal clear: put Little Jimmy King back at the center, with a modern sound and deeply felt performances. For longtime Eric Gales fans, it reveals a more intimate side of his playing, rooted in family history. For electric-blues listeners, it’s an ideal gateway into the work of a rare musician it was high time to bring back to the forefront.

Looking back at Little Jimmy King’s career

Little Jimmy King, born Manuel Gales on December 4, 1964, in Memphis, Tennessee, was a guitarist and singer who took his stage name as a tribute to Albert King, whose sharp, expressive style he admired — and with whom he sometimes shared the stage. Raised amid Memphis’s musical ferment, he first drew attention in the 1980s with the Bar-Kays, then with the Memphis Soul Survivors and the Joe Louis Walker Band. In the 1990s, he released three acclaimed albums on Bullseye Blues: Something Inside of Me (1991), Living in the Danger Zone (1993), and Soldier for the Blues (1997). His playing — incisive yet deeply soulful — reflected Memphis’s heritage while asserting a unique personality. Passing away prematurely on July 21, 2002, in Dallas, he left a short but striking discography and a lasting influence on his younger brother, Eric Gales.