Albert Gene Collins (October 1, 1932 – November 24, 1993)[1] was an American electric blues guitarist and singer with a distinctive guitar style.

[3] He was introduced to the guitar at an early age by his cousin Lightnin' Hopkins, also a Leona resident, who played at family gatherings.

The Collins family relocated to Marquez, Texas, in 1938 and to Houston in 1941,[4] where he attended Jack Yates High School.

[6] At the age of sixteen, he decided to concentrate on learning the guitar after hearing "Boogie Chillen' " by John Lee Hooker.

[9][10] By the mid-1950s, he had established his reputation as a local guitarist of note and had started to appear regularly at a Fifth Ward club, Walter's Lounge, with the group Big Tiny and the Thunderbirds.

[23] He opened for the Grateful Dead at the Family Dog on the Great Highway in San Francisco in early August, 1969 and in June-July 1970 toured with them, the Band, Janis Joplin and other acts across Canada in the Festival Express.

[28] He was signed by Bruce Iglauer, the owner of Alligator Records, in 1978 on the recommendation of Dick Shurman, whom Collins had met in Seattle.

[5] His first release for the label was Ice Pickin' (1978), which was recorded at Curtom Studios, in Chicago, and produced by Iglauer, Shurman and Richard McLeese.

The concert was filmed for the Dutch TV show Tros Sesjun and was subsequently released on vinyl in 1979 by Munich Records as Albert Collins with The Barrelhouse Live.

[29] Collins won a W. C. Handy Award in the category Best Contemporary Blues Album in 1983 for his Alligator release Don't Lose Your Cool.

On 13 July 1985, Collins performed with George Thorogood and the Destroyers at Live Aid, appearing as guest soloist on "Madison Blues"; the US part of the charity concert was held at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and, with simultaneous broadcasts in other countries, was viewed by over 1.5 billion people.

[32][33] The backing musicians for the concert were Rick Rosas (bass), Michael Huey (drums), Ed Sanford (Hammond B3 organ), Kip Noble (piano) and Josh Sklar (guitar).

[4] On 12 February 1987, Collins appeared as a musical guest on the NBC talk show Late Night with David Letterman.

King, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan; the group played on the steamboat President as it cruised along the Mississippi River, in recognition of the musical heritage of New Orleans and artists such as Fate Marable, Louis Armstrong and Red Allen, who had entertained passengers on the fleet of riverboats owned by the Streckfus brothers.

[37] Collins was performing at the Paléo Festival in Nyon, Switzerland, in July 1993 when he was taken ill.[46] He was diagnosed in mid-August with lung cancer, which had metastasized to his liver, with an expected survival time of four months.

[56] Albert Collins is buried at Davis Memorial Park in Las Vegas, Nevada, a cemetery adjacent to Harry Reid International Airport.

In an interview with Guitar World magazine, Robert Cray said, "it was seeing Albert Collins at a rock festival in 1969 that really turned my head around."