Blues-rock | All About Blues Music

MARK NAFTALIN

Pianist and keyboard player Mark Naftalin has played on over 100 albums by Legends like John Lee Hooker, Otis Rush, Lowell Fulson and dozens of others. Mark started out in The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, appearing on their first four albums before settling in San Francisco in the late 60s. He led his own band,…

MIKE BLOOMFIELD

Mike Bloomfield got his Blues guitar education as a kid in the clubs on Chicago’s Southside with some of the true ‘originators’, occasionally jumping onstage to join in with them! He ran a folk club when he left school, where he would book the old Blues players he had played with. Mike joined Paul Butterfield’s…

CARLOS SANTANA

If “Blues is the roots and other music is the fruits”, (to quote Willie Dixon) then Carlos Santana’s music might be a strawberry/melon/mango hybrid; a rich blend of flavours with plenty of juice. From the heyday of experimental 60s San Francisco Blues bands to jazz-fusion, devotional music, Latin grooves and monster selling collaborations, Carlos has…

KENNY WAYNE SHEPHERD

When a seven-year-old kid gets to meet someone like Stevie Ray Vaughan, there’s a good chance he’ll pick up a guitar and try to play some Blues-Rock. Kenny Wayne Shepherd took up the challenge with both hands and made a big name for himself as a young Master of the Stratocaster. Displaying plenty of guitar…

ROBERT CRAY

Nobody has explored the borderlines between Blues and Soul as successfully as Robert Cray. A Blues guitarist with a distinctively economical sustainless style and a set of Soul pipes to die for, Robert was among the leaders of the 80’s Blues revival, along with Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert Collins. Robert has more than fulfilled…

JOE BONAMASSA

Joe Bonamassa is taking the Blues to new places, as his songwriting talents blossom and his virtuoso instrumental work explores infinite possibilities of a man and his guitar. Starting out as something of a ‘boy wonder’, Joe has developed into a mature artist who can impress the afficionados, and yet remain accessible to the first…

PAUL BUTTERFIELD

Nobody knows how a 15-year-old middle class white kid got into the Blues clubs on the South side of Chicago in 1957, but that is where Paul Butterfield met the Blues head-on. He was learning to play the flute at school, but what he heard in those smoky dives inspired him to switch to harmonica…

RORY GALLAGHER

Rory Gallagher was a great front-man for a blues-rock band. His guitar playing, loud, caustic, soulful or delicate, was always a clear and coherent statement, complimented by a distinctive voice capable of raw power and surprising gentleness. Growing up in Cork, the young Rory listened to American music on AFN and copied players like Lead…

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN

In the early 80’s, the Blues had dropped from popular view again, but nobody did more to pick it up and shove it in people’s faces than Stevie Ray Vaughan. His bold, fiery leadership of power trio Double Trouble invited comparison with Hendrix, but his deep empathy for the Blues made guitar heroes and old-school…

ALBERT KING

The eldest of the Three Kings, Albert learned to play the diddley-bow and cigar-box guitar as a kid in Indianola, Mississippi. He was born in 1923 as Albert Nelson, the son of a local preacher who died when Albert was 13, and he started out in gospel groups but, after hearing some Blind Lemon Jefferson…