Guitar | All About Blues Music

SCREAMING JAY HAWKINS

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins never sold a lot of records in the greater scheme of things, but his one hit, ‘I Put a Spell on You’ was hugely influential and his talent for theatrical live shows made him a star. Usually emerging from a coffin onstage, wild-eyed and raving, toting a smoking skull on a pole…

SMOKEY WILSON

Downhome Mississippi Blues guitarist Smokey relocated to LA in his mid-thirties and opened the Pioneer Club in Watts, where he fronted the house band and booked the hottest Blues acts around. Smokey was born in the Mississippi Delta where he played with Big Jack Johnson and Frank Frost before taking his juke-joint boogie style Westwards.…

FURRY LEWIS

Of all the old Blues singers who were rediscovered in the 60s, Furry Lewis was by far the most engaging character. With his peg-leg, his inexhaustable stock of stories, his considerable skill with a guitar and his witty songs, he became a Blues Celebrity on TV, in movies and even in Playboy Magazine. Walter Lewis…

BLIND BOY FULLER

Piedmont Blues seems dominated by blind men who managed to survive by playing for change on streetcorners. That was true of Blind Blake, Blind Willie McTell and Gary Davis, and none of them sold enough records to make a good living while they were in their prime. That was not true of Blind Boy Fuller, who…

BLIND BLAKE

Apart from his enduring legacy of over 100 tracks of superb fingerpicking guitar, very little was known about the personal life of Blind Blake until very recently. A death certificate discovered in Milwaukee states that Arthur Blake was born in 1896 in Newport News VA, but he was probably raised in Northern Florida or the…

OTIS RUSH

Chicago in the mid-50s was Bluesville. The music of BB King, Elmore James and the ‘Big Beasts’ of the Chess label dominated the Delta based Blues heard in every club on the South-side, but across on the West side of town, a new sound was taking shape. The heavy back-beat behind harp and guitars that…

JEREMY SPENCER

Jeremy could play slide-guitar just like Elmore James and that is what he was brought into Fleetwood Mac to do, contributing to massive hits like ‘Albatross’ and ‘Black Magic Woman’. His rumbunctuous stage act got Mac banned from some venues and, in turbulent times for the individual players, musical differences saw Jeremy becoming isolated within…

TAMPA RED

Tampa Red and Big Bill Broonzy were good friends, long-time drinking buddies and the twin powerhouses behind the Blues scene in 1930s Chicago. Neither man had an ego problem and they both acted as mentors to the dozens of young musicians arriving from the South. Red’s apartment became a rehearsal space, rooming house and unofficial…

ELIZABETH ‘LIBBA’ COTTEN

Not many Blues players have an instrumental style so unique that it carries their name. Libba Cotten’s phenomenally accurate, but ‘upside-down’ Piedmont style with its alternating bass strings became known as ‘Cotten-picking’. Not too many write a worldwide hit song at the age of 12 either, but this is only part of the extraordinary story…

DAVID ‘Honeyboy’ EDWARDS

One of the few authentic Delta Blues players to bring the music into the present day, Honeyboy Edwards recorded a Grammy winning album in 2008 and was still performing almost until the day he died. Honeyboy reported that he was with his friend, the legendary Delta Bluesman Robert Johnson on the night he drank the…