When it opened in August of 1970, the Armadillo World Headquarters was not set up for success as a music venue. For starters, the space was a cavernous, former National Guard armory—no air conditioning, no seating, certainly no acoustic treatment or high-end sound equipment. The building could fit an audience of thousands, but there were no local artists with that big of a draw. As a city, Austin was something of a cultural afterthought, a sleepy town centered around the state government and the University of Texas.

“We would sit around for hours trying to figure out who we could get to play there that would actually break even or make money,” remembers Mike Tolleson, the Armadillo’s in-house lawyer. Cut off from the national touring circuit, Tolleson had to build connections with New York and L.A. booking agents, “just getting them to recognize [the Armadillo] as being a viable facility in Austin, Texas in those days when bands didn’t want to come to a redneck area.”

Freddie King soon changed that perception. Born in tiny Gilmer, Texas, King grew up in Chicago and immersed himself in the blues scene, first sitting in with Howlin’ Wolf’s band at the age of sixteen. He developed an idiosyncratic take on blues guitar, combining Chicago’s electrified sound with a Texan wildness influenced by Lightnin’ Hopkins and T-Bone Walker. His booming voice traded punches with his searing lead guitar licks, sounding like a force of nature.

Yet King’s first national exposure came on an instrumental. “Hide Away” was a Frankenstein of a song, combining ideas from Hound Dog Taylor, Jimmy McCracklin, and even the theme to the popular TV series Peter Gunn. Released in 1960, “Hide Away” hit number five on the R&B charts and number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming one of the first blues songs to cross over to a white audience. A few years later, Eric Clapton covered the song, which helped spread King’s sound to British audiences.

Throughout his career, Freddie King was on the road nearly three hundred days per year, supporting acts from James Brown and Sam Cooke to Led Zeppelin and Grand Funk Railroad. In the late ‘60s, his constant touring first brought him to white Austin audiences. The Vulcan Gas Company was a counterculture-run club intended to showcase burgeoning psychedelic rock acts like the 13th Floor Elevators. But it also became home to a passionate and dedicated blues scene, featuring national stars like King along with Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Big Mama Thornton and others. When the Vulcan closed, its sensibility seeped into the Armadillo. The staff hoped blues giants like King could help pay the bills and turn the Armadillo into an in-demand live music destination, for fans and musicians alike.