Eric Gales has been the name on guitar connoisseurs’ lips for three decades now. Famed as a 90s blues-rock prodigy, but then seemingly throwing it all away with a 2009 jail stretch for drugs and firearms possession, it’s been heartening to watch the Memphis guitarist rise again with redemptive Grammy-nominated records such as 2022’s Crown.
Today, however, Gales wants to swing the spotlight onto his beloved elder brother. A fiery bluesman billed professionally as Little Jimmy King, who also used Eric’s unfathomable ‘upside-down’ guitar technique, Manuel Gales was a hero to those who knew of him, but he died in 2002 of a heart attack before he became a bona fide superstar.
