Alvin K. Smith (August 8, 1923 – January 21, 1999), who performed and recorded as Al King, was an American

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

singer and songwriter. King was born in

Monroe, Louisiana Monroe (historically french: Poste-du-Ouachita) is the eighth-largest city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, and parish seat of Ouachita Parish. With a 2020 census-tabulated population of 47,702, it is the principal city of the Monroe metropolita ...

. After moving to Los Angeles he recorded for the Shirley and

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labels in the 1950s and 1960s, and had a number 36 US ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' R&B

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...

hit in 1966 with "Think Twice Before You Speak". Many of his records featured guitarist and bandleader Johnny Heartsman. He also wrote songs under his real name, Smith, as in "On My Way", the

B-side The A-side and B-side are the two sides of phonograph records and cassettes; these terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings. The A-side usually features a recording that its artist, producer, or record compan ...

of his first single covering " Reconsider Baby" in 1964. King died in Oakland, California in January 1999 at the age of 75.

References

1923 births 1999 deaths American blues singers People from Monroe, Louisiana Singers from Louisiana 20th-century American singers {{US-singer-stub