Freddie King

Of all the black blues players from whom the English and other young white kids of the 1960s learned, Freddie King is probably the one who will strike a new listener as sounding more like, for instance, Eric Clapton, though the influence is of course the other way around. He has a loud and aggressive sound, closer to what would become blues-rock than some of his peers, like B.B. King.  I found a number of live performances from the early '70s on YouTube, and discovered that although there is some killer guitar work in them, overall they tend to seem over-driven and harsh in comparison with some of his earlier recorded work. 

Here, for instance, is a song for which he was well-known, "Have You Ever Loved a Woman?", in a live performance from 1970.

And here's the same song from the original 1960 recording. The sound is not great, and since the song had to fit on a 45 single, there's not room for a whole lot of guitar. But the vocal is richer and more varied, and overall it's just a more comfortable-feeling performance.

"Tore Down", 1963:

For another comparison, here's a live performance which I think is ca. 1970, though there is no info with the clip: faster tempo, impressive guitar, but overall just lacking in feeling, in my opinion.

But this "Ain't Nobody's Business", which seems to be from the same performance, is good--though to my taste it's still pushed a little too hard. I don't know if it was just his personality, or if the rock influence had begun to flow the other way.

There is an excellent compilation from Rhino, Hideaway: The Best of Freddie King, which includes 20 tracks recorded from the late 1950s until 1970, with emphasis on the earlier stuff. (Why "Hideaway"? Because it was his most popular single, and made the non-R&B pop charts.)