Guitar | All About Blues Music

JOHN PRIMER

The story of the Blues might be summed up by the tale of a kid who sits twanging a ‘diddley bow’ in some rural Delta backwater, who fulfils his dreams by moving to the big city and playing alongside the biggest Blues Legends. Surprisingly, there are still one or two of these characters around, and…

Chantel McGregor

Chantel is a sweet girl’s name, of French origin, which is associated with ‘song’ but an older meaning links it to a mountainous area and means ‘rock’, so the omens are good for Chantel McGregor, because that is just what she does. With her long blonde hair and a taste for evening dresses, it’s hard…

BABY TATE

Piedmont Blues is not as dark and brooding as its Delta cousin, often featuring delightful ragtime melodies and delicate fingerpicking and tricksy embelishments. There was an upsurge in interest in this style during the Folk/Blues revival of the 60s, with players like Rev. Gary Davis and Josh White filling clubs in New York, but back…

GUITAR SHORTY 1

There has been more than one Blues player called Guitar Shorty, but something they have in common is a talent for showmanship. Jimi Hendrix‘s brother-in-law is still using that name over on the West-coast for his backflipping, flash-guitar stage act, and others may have used it too, but an older Bluesman with an similar ‘larger-than-life’…

Rev. ROBERT WILKINS

Blues and Gospel music share a lot of common roots, and it is not unusual for performers to cross the line in both directions. The renowned Delta Bluesman Son House was a ‘Hellfire Preacher’ before the Devil’s music took his soul, and the Rev. Gary Davis belonged to a rollicking Blues scene in Atlanta before…

SMOKIN’ JOE KUBEK

Texas ‘Roadhouse Blues’ is always a popular form of music, and while it rarely breaks new ground, it always makes for a good night out! Smokin’ Joe Kubek and his side-kick Bnois King have formed a very ‘complimentary’ guitar partnership that is far more than the sum of its parts. They have been pounding the…

FENTON ROBINSON

Sometimes a great blues talent slips through the net, producing their best work when our music is going through a slow time, and having their best songs made famous by other people. Fenton Robinson was called a “mellow guitar genius” by Japanese fans, and his sparkling, Jazz-flavoured guitar and smooth baritone voice made him a…

JOHNNY ‘Geechie’ TEMPLE

With a laid-back, ‘worldly-wise’ vocal style and a talent for clever lyrics, Johnny ‘Geechie’ Temple recorded dozens of his good-selling Blues songs in the 30s and 40s. Although he was never a big star, Johnny had a long career that stretched from his origins in the Delta to the early days of Chess records in…

BLUE SMITTY

The Blues is a hybrid animal, absorbing elements and influences from all around and incorporating them into new and progressive styles of music. Individual musicians absorb the influences of others, consciously or otherwise, and sometimes they even openly steal others work to present as their own. This is just the way it has played out…

ELVIN BISHOP

The Blues got a big new audience in the 60s when white kids discovered the power of this fantastically expressive music, which they took up enthusiastically and turned into a cultural phenomenon. The British Blues Boom, and bands like The Stones and The Animals took the world by storm, but in The States some youngsters…