Guitar | All About Blues Music

LEFTY DIZZ

The History of the Blues is littered with wild characters like Charley Patton, Little Walter and Guitar Slim, but Lefty Dizz was one of the wildest, despite being little known outside Chicago. A fixture on the club scene from the mid-60s until the early 90s, Lefty and his band Shock Treatment pulled every trick in…

AL ‘Blind Owl’ WILSON

Al Wilson played harp and guitar for the great white American Blues band, Canned Heat, from it’s formation in 1965 to his untimely death in 1970. As an instrumentalist, singer and lyricist, he was a cornerstone of the band; as a student of the Blues, he was a respected researcher who was part of a…

BREWER PHILLIPS

Brewer Phillips is best remembered as a driving force behind Hound Dog Taylor’s Houserockers. Alongside his loud long-time drumming partner Ted Harvey, Brewer would keep a bass-line pounding on his guitar using a thumb-pick, while using his fingers to strum the heavy juke-joint boogies of his native Mississippi hill country. This potent rhythm section allowed…

CAROLINA SLIM

Carolina Slim is the best known pseudonym of the enigmatic Edward P Harris. His records were issued under the names Country Paul, Georgia Pine, Jammin’ Jim and Lazy Slim Jim in a short but productive recording career in the early 50s, but he passed away shortly after his 30th birthday. The quality of the work…

STICK McGHEE

‘Stick’ McGhee is not so well known as his brother Brownie, but he wrote some great boozy Blues songs, and one of them, ‘Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee’, has become a classic, covered many times down the years, including versions by Jerry Lee Lewis, Wynonie Harris, Larry Dale and Mike Bloomfield’s Electric Flag. Granville McGhee was born…

ROY BUCHANAN

‘The Best Unknown Guitarist in the World’ was a 1971 TV documentary about Roy Buchanan. Playing his trademark Fender, which he first picked up at the age of 13, Roy was a unique-sounding session guitarist, who apparently turned down a spot in The Rolling Stones, and went on to record some great Blues-rock albums before…

SON SEALS

Chicago guitarist Son Seals spent his whole career carrying the flag for the powerful ‘West-side’ guitar breaks pioneered in the solos of Otis Rush and Magic Sam back in the late 50s and early 60s. Son’s rawboned Blues guitar licks could convey joyful high energy, deep rage and anger, and a smiling confident swagger, and…

ANDY FAIRWEATHER-LOW

Andy Fairweather-Low has that light but fatally cracked vocal quality that is very simpatico with a Blues tune. The plaintive appeal that radiates from his version of ‘Gin House’ on the first Amen Corner album opened a lot of young ears to the emotional power of the Blues. Andy pursued a successful solo career in…

SYLVESTER WEAVER

Sylvester Weaver was the first man to record a Blues guitar instrumental, and his recordings with Sara Martin in 1923 were the first songs where a Blues singer was accompanied by a single guitar. Sylvester’s work on guitar and banjo were very influential in all kinds of Blues and Country music, but at the age…

TONY JOE WHITE

Tony Joe White is a great singer/songwriter who has penned several classic tunes for big R&B, Soul and Country stars, and his deeply soulful voice took one of his own recordings high in the singles chart. He was one of the first artists to bring electric Swamp Blues to Europe, and his later work has…