Guitar | All About Blues Music

ISHMON BRACEY

Delta guitarist Ishmon (often spelled Ishman in older sources) only recorded a few tracks, but they were of consistently good quality, using variations on the usual verse structure, and his original 78s are much sought-after rarities today. As a teenager Ishmon was playing guitar on streetcorners, hoping for invitations to play at parties and fish-fries…

ROBERT PETE WILLIAMS

If country Blues is about lamenting a hard life, with poverty, violence, illiteracy, jail-time and betrayal by your woman, then Robert Pete Williams certainly lived that life. Despite being an endlessly inventive guitarist and a desperately soulful singer, Robert was never a big selling artist, but his appearances at Blues Festivals around the world opened…

MATT ‘GUITAR’ MURPHY

One of the most respected side-men on the Chicago Blues scene, Matt Murphy is universally acclaimed for his sharp, eloquent guitar lines that seem to say ‘Amen’ to every tune they attend. He has played with some of the seminal figures of the Blues and added high quality to their work in every instance, in…

JORMA KAUKONEN

Jorma Kaukonen is best known as the guitarist with San Francisco based psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane, but he is also an accomplished Piedmont Blues player. Jorma learned fingerpicking guitar in the style of Rev. Gary Davis and accompanied a young Janis Joplin on the campus of Santa Clara University in 1964. A founder member of…

ROEBUCK ‘POPS’ STAPLES

The Staple Singers were a big soul act in the 60s and 70s with their inspiring gospel-flavoured sound, but their patriarch Roebuck Staples was an old-fashioned Blues player who bridged the worlds of the Delta and deep urban funk, and went back to his roots with a late-blooming solo career. Born in Winona MS in…

PEE-WEE CRAYTON

Connie Crayton was a Texas guitarist who made an impact when he moved to LA and was a mainstay of the Bay Area Blues scene for decades when he settled a little further north. Pee-Wee’s style owed much to T-Bone Walker and Charlie Christian, two friends who were active on the Houston scene when Pee-Wee…

HOUND DOG TAYLOR

Theodore Roosevelt Taylor learned his slide-guitar around his native Natchez MS, playing at parties and juke-joints. He was already 20 when he learned to play and a few appearances on the King Biscuit Time radio show convinced Hound Dog to try his luck in Chicago. He relocated there in 1942, and played part-time around the…

ROBBEN FORD

Robben Ford is a multi-talented guitarist whose Blues sensibilities are overwritten with a true jazz player’s curiosity and inventiveness. Robben was born in California in 1951 and took up the sax as a kid, but switched to guitar when he was 14. He was a big Paul Butterfield fan so it was no surprise when…

GUITAR SLIM

With a gospel voice straight out of Church and a guitar style straight out of the swamp; with his flashy suits and wild stage act, Guitar Slim was a major contributor to New Orleans R&B. Slim was a direct influence on the young generation of up-and-coming Southern guitarists like Buddy Guy and Albert Collins. If…

HUBERT SUMLIN

For more than 20 years Hubert Sumlin’s guitar was right behind Howlin’ Wolf on stage and on record. ‘Killin’ Floor’, ‘Smokestack Lightnin’, ‘Spoonful’ and ‘Ain’t Superstitious’ all had Hubert’s razor-sharp guitar lines behind Wolf’s rumbling vocals. Hubert played the diddley-bow back in Greenwood MS when he was a kid and he teamed up with local…