Much like the records fellow bluesman Freddie King was cutting for Shelter Records during the same period with some of the same sidemen, 1971's Lovejoy was Albert King's most fully realized attempt to bridge the divide between blues and rock. Produced by former Mar-Key Don Nix, the sessions were split between Hollywood and Muscle Shoals and sport a cast that includes onetime Taj Mahal guitarist Jesse Edwin Davis and drum ace Jim Keltner. Although recorded a long way from King's home in Lovejoy, Illinois, King appointed himself well to the proceedings and delivered blistering renditions of numbers like the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women," Taj's "She Caught the Katy and Left Me a Mule to Ride," and Nix's "Going Back to Iuka."

with Jesse Edwin Davis, John Gallie, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Jim Keltner, Sandy Konikoff, Tippy Armstrong, Wayne Perkins, Barry Beckett, David Hood, Roger Hawkins, Jeanne Greene and the Mt. Zion Singers