Guitar | All About Blues Music

MICKEY BAKER

Very few guitarists are credited with changing the sound of popular music, but Mickey Baker’s work on countless hit singles in the 50s incorporated the essence of R&B, as he added his hot riffs and turnarounds to some of the most iconic records of the day. His intelligent Jazz/Blues guitar was heard high in the…

ROBERT PETWAY

Little is known of Robert Petway’s life beyond the sessions he recorded for Bluebird Records in 1941 and ’42. Those records include ‘Catfish Blues’, which Muddy Waters adapted as ‘Rollin’ Stone’ a few years later, and the high quality of those pressings give us the authentic sound of Delta Blues just before it came to…

JOE CALLICOTT

Joe Callicott was one of the original Delta Blues singers who played his guitar and sang at dances, parties and juke-joints back in the early 20s, but unlike some of his better known peers, Joe made only one record at the time. He was ‘rediscovered’ in the 60s to enjoy a short revival of his…

LONNIE PITCHFORD

Lonnie Pitchford is one of a very few Bluesman who have mastered the diddley bow, a one-stringed instrument of African origin that was the starting point for the ‘bottleneck’ and slide-guitar techniques that are fundamental to the origins of Blues in the Delta. Despite his unique talents, he is not well known outside his region…

CHARLEY BOOKER

Charley Booker was born and raised in Sunflower County, in the Mississippi Delta, with the sound of original Blues music all around him. The plantation where Charley grew up is just east of Indianola, where Charley reported seeing Charley Patton play. Charley’s uncle played with Patton and the kid was playing guitar in local juke-joints…

FLOYD COUNCIL

Floyd Council was a superb Piedmont guitarist, mandolin player and singer, whose records appeared under the names ‘Dipper Boy’ Council and ‘The Devil’s Daddy-in-Law’. These tags were the work of his manager J D Long, who loved to give his acts memorable names: he called Fulton Allen ‘Blind Boy Fuller‘, harp player Saunders Terrell became…

ROY GAINES

Roy Gaines was born on 1934 in Waskom, Texas and brought up in Houston. There was music in the family, as his older brother Grady played sax as a session musician for Don Robey‘s Peacock Records, and later joined Little Richard‘s band The Upsetters. Roy started out playing piano, but switched to guitar because he…

JOE HILL LOUIS

There is a long tradition of one-man-bands playing Blues music on street-corners. Strumming a guitar, blowing a harp in a neck-rack and beating drums and crashing cymbals with some combination of feet, knees and elbows, a street entertainer could make a living from this talent for multi-tasking. Daddy Stovepipe was the first one-man-band to make…

JOSEPH SPENCE

Once in while, a guitarist comes along with a fresh, new style that expands the possibilities of the instrument. Robert Johnson, Elmore James and Jimi Hendrix are men who took the guitar into new territory, but among Folk guitarists, Joseph Spence is another pioneer who took the music forward. With a dazzling, virtuoso instrumental technique,…

‘PAPA’ CHARLIE McCOY

Charlie McCoy is a big Country music star, but he shares his name with an older Blues player who was not a star, but whose virtuoso work on hundreds of records made a huge contribution to our music. ‘Papa’ Charlie McCoy was the younger brother of renowned slide-guitarist ‘Kansas Joe’ McCoy, and his superb mandolin…