Guitar | All About Blues Music

SUPER CHIKAN

The Blues started out in over a hundred years ago as a rural music, and many of the originators of Blues music wrote songs with agricultural themes, with work songs, or ballads about crops or pests or the weather, and about their own dogs and mules. Old country harp players might imitate farmyard animals in…

GARY CLARK Jr.

Texas has played an important rôle in the story of the Blues, with old timers like Blind Lemon Jefferson, innovators like T-Bone Walker, stars of the Blues Revival like Lightnin’ Hopkins and modern guitar heroes like Johnny Winter and Stevie Ray Vaughan. A young man who has absorbed some of the magic of his Lone-Star…

JACK OWENS

Jack Owens, along with his friend Skip James was one of the players from their home town of Bentonia who used minor key tunings in their guitar playing, which gave it quite a different feel to the dark tones of the classic Delta Blues heard further north in Clarksdale. Jack didn’t use falsetto vocals like…

WALTER VINSON

Walter Vinson is best known as a member of the renowned string-band The Mississippi Sheiks, and as co-writer of their huge 1930 hit ‘Sitting on Top of the World’. However, Walter’s career had begun long before that and was to go on into the 1970s, like many of the originators of the Blues who enjoyed…

Sonny Landreth

Combining his wicked side-guitar work with a fretting and chording technique, and a whole bagful of right hand tricks with finger-picking, hammering and a heavy thumb-pick, Sonny Landreth brings a unique style to his Southern Blues. Also known as ‘The King of Slydeco’, Sonny’s playing has strong zydeco and Swamp Blues roots, but his expansive,…

PETE SEEGER

Pete Seeger was part of a politicised, multi-cultural music community in New York after WWII, that played a important rôle in the popular fight against injustice, not just in America, but all over the world. His live and recorded performances, his songwriting and his political activism made him famous and his collaborations with other musicians,…

JONNY LANG

Many young guitarist love to play the Blues, but few do it with the passion and authenticity of Jonny Lang. With a voice that sounded like a veteran when he was still of school age and a stinging solo guitar style that was straight out of Chicago, the kid made a big impact when first…

EDDIE ‘Playboy’ TAYLOR

Phenomenal Chicago side-men like James Cotton, Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy, Earl Hooker and Otis Spann spent years backing the legendary Bluesmen with very little recognition until late in their careers, and Eddie ‘Playboy’ Taylor’s talents were similarly unheralded outside guitar specialist circles. His superb rhythm playing on all Jimmy Reed‘s records gave them a swinging dance-able…

JULIUS DANIEL

Julius Daniels was an early Piedmont Blues singer with a rich, deep, clear voice who made some important records when field-recording units were combing the South in the 20s looking for talent. He recorded seven tracks for the Victor label during two sessions in Atlanta during 1927, with ’99-Year Blues’ being the best known and…

JOANNE SHAW TAYLOR

The Blues springs from some unlikely places these days, and a genteel English suburban neighborhood might seem pretty unlikely. It’s as far from the Delta as you could get, and when you hear blistering Blues licks and heart-rending vocals coming from a pretty girl-next-door type who would look more at home on the cover of…