Jim King

Jim King — wind instruments, harmonica, and Family's lead vocalist before Roger Chapman joined in 1966 — was the most elusive figure of the original Family lineup, the one whose departure in late 1969 effectively closed the band's first chapter. Born Alec Woodburn on 5 May 1942 in Kettering, Northamptonshire, he played on Music in a Doll's House (1968) and Family Entertainment (1969), helped shape the early single sides that established Family's late-1960s identity, and died on 6 February 2012 in Middlewich, England.

The Farinas (1962–1966)

When Charlie Whitney formed The Farinas at Leicester Art College in 1962, King was the band's frontman — vocals, saxophone and blues harp. The band's diet was R&B and blues covers; their one Fontana single (1964) paired the original You'd Better Stop with Chris Kenner's I Like It Like That (the latter also covered by the Dave Clark Five two years later). On You'd Better Stop, King's harmonica work stands comparison with Keith Relf's or Mick Jagger's of the same period — the single failed commercially but earned the Farinas their first London bookings at Middle Earth and the Speakeasy. A 1972 NME retrospective remembered him as "the legendary local vocalist Jim King who dressed in old army greatcoat, trilby hat and played harmonica on stage with the Farinas. A prototype Ian Anderson…."

When Ric Grech joined in 1965 and Roger Chapman in 1966, the band suddenly had three vocalists. Whitney has described the resulting configuration as "kind of a James Brown thing" — Chapman could also handle some saxophone, freeing the band to alternate front-of-stage roles. King kept the blues covers; Chapman, increasingly, took the originals.

Family — Music in a Doll's House and Family Entertainment (1968–1969)

Within the band's originals, King's playing stretched out melodically. The colourings he provided helped move Family from clubbing R&B band to genuine Brit-progressive contenders. The clearest case study is the saxophone line on the debut single Scene Through the Eye of a Lens: a pastoral acoustic opening augmented by a melodic soprano sax that "gently laps like small waves on the shore," a menacing rock middle section with King's strange vocal incantations, and the same sax line returning at the end, but now insistent, edgy, almost dangerous in context. That dynamic — sax as a different colour each time it appears — is what distinguishes King's playing across Music in a Doll's House (1968) from any of the Family contemporaries who used wind instruments in similar genre territory.

His other defining trait was a hair-raising falsetto, deployed across Gypsy Woman, The Chase (to outright frightening effect), Old Songs New Songs (transforming the song into a hymn), and Peace of Mind. The harmonica work on Old Songs New Songs and See Through Windows belongs in any short-list of late-1960s British rock harp playing.

Family Entertainment (1969) found King in a more uncertain role. With Dave Mason no longer producing and the band's manager mixing the album in their absence, the record never reached the cohesion of the debut. King is credited with piano on the album (he can be heard singing on at least one track despite no vocal credit), and his sax work ranges from the smoky pure-jazz solo on The Weaver's Answer through the Klezmer-leaning tone on Summer '67 to the campfire harmonica on From Past Archives. Dim is probably his biggest single moment on the LP — full of the lighthearted blues harp that had been his Farinas signature — and Emotions gives him a final falsetto turn before the doubled-piano playing (King and Whitney together) takes over the back half of the song.

Departure (late 1969)

King was still in the band when material for the third album was being prepared. Early radio-session versions of Drowned in Wine, Love Is a Sleeper, Wheels, and Anyway's Holding the Compass were performed in 1969 with King's wind parts foregrounded — the songs were being written with him still in mind. After the late 1969 single No Mule's Fool / Good Friend of Mine, the band concluded that he was no longer fit to continue. "Erratic behaviour" was the public phrase; health problems were the underlying cause. Vibraphone is heard on the B-side of that final King-era single, and is almost certainly his replacement Poli Palmer already filtering in.

The Palmer choice was an odd one — Palmer's wind ability was limited to flute, never the saxes that had been King's principal Family voice — and on A Song For Me (recorded late 1969) Palmer's flute is overdubbed in many of the spaces where King's saxes would have been. The change was far more than a personnel substitution: it altered the band's instrumental palette permanently.

Post-Family (1969–2012)

King's other significant recorded appearance was on Gordon Jackson's Thinking Back (1969) — a session record that gathered Jim Capaldi, Dave Mason, Steve Winwood, Julie Driscoll, Ric Grech, Luther Grosvenor, Chris Wood and Poli Palmer alongside King. He briefly formed Ring of Truth with Victor Brox after leaving Family, and a music-paper advert also billed him for a guest appearance with Aynsley Dunbar's Blue Whale. No further recordings are known.

By the late 1990s King was still composing — concentrating on jazz arranged for chromatic harmonica, his original Farinas instrument. Dave Eames of the Family fan circle bumped into him at a Roger Chapman concert; Mick White spoke to him for the Family biography research. He kept a low profile, and the work that survives — the two Family albums and the handful of associated singles — stands as his recorded legacy.

Death (2012)

Jim King died on 6 February 2012 in Middlewich, England. Hugh Gregory's 1000 Great Guitarists (GPI Books, 1994) had earlier offered the most concise critical summary of King's place in the Family arc: "That the group failed to survive [in its first form] was partly due to the later absence of Jim King, whose meaty sax solos provided the ideal counterpoint to Chapman's vocals and Whitney's guitar work."

Selected discography

With The Farinas

• You'd Better Stop / I Like It Like That (Fontana, 1964)

With Family

• Music in a Doll's House (Reprise, 1968)
• Family Entertainment (Reprise, 1969)
• Singles: Scene Through the Eye of a Lens / Gypsy Woman (1968); Me My Friend / Hey Mr Policeman (1968); Second Generation Woman / Hometown (1969); No Mule's Fool / Good Friend of Mine (late 1969 — King's final session)

Selected sessions

• Gordon Jackson — Thinking Back (1969, with Capaldi, Mason, Winwood, Driscoll, Grech, Grosvenor, Wood, Palmer)

Post-Family

• Ring of Truth (with Victor Brox, formed shortly after leaving Family)
• Aynsley Dunbar's Blue Whale — guest appearance noted in period press

Born: Alec Woodburn, 5 May 1942, Kettering, Northamptonshire
Died: 6 February 2012, Middlewich, England
Family tenure: founding member (as Alec Woodburn) – late 1969
Instruments: saxophone, harmonica, flute, vocals, occasional piano

Sources: NME (1972) Family retrospective; Hugh Gregory, 1000 Great Guitarists (GPI Books, 1994); "Faulty Towers" — John Bungey, MOJO (August 1996), in the Press Archive; Charlie Whitney interview, The Weaver's Answer fanzine (1999); Dave Eames and Mick White correspondence in fanzine archive; Discogs.