Guitar | All About Blues Music

STEVE CROPPER

Steve Cropper, often hailed as one of the greatest guitar players of all time, has left an indelible mark on the world of music. Born on October 21, 1941, in Dora, Missouri, Steve developed an early passion for music that would shape his remarkable career. Growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, he became captivated by the…

CHRIS THOMAS KING

Chris Thomas King was born to the Blues. He built a career in the 80s as an electric Blues guitarist and talented songwriter; introduced hip-hop beats and rapping fusions to his work in the 90s; and gained worldwide fame as ‘Tommy Johnson’ in the film ‘Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?’ Further feature film and TV…

JAMES ‘Son’ THOMAS

James ‘Son’ Thomas was a Mississippi Bluesman to the core. His guitar playing, with its vigorous boogies and delicate fingerpicking passages, and his sweet-toned but heartfelt vocals, he left us with some of the deepest, dirtiest Blues of the modern era. A talented sculptor, whose work featured some macabre subjects and used items like skulls…

PAUL ‘Wine’ JONES

In the juke-joints of Northern Mississippi, up in the hills above the Delta, people played a raw-boned, good-time Blues which lay almost undiscovered until the 90s, when labels like Fat Possum and High Water began to record the fantastic, high energy Blues player they found in the small towns up there. Paul ‘Wine’ Jones was…

SMILEY LEWIS

Smiley Lewis was a big-voiced New Orleans guitarist who put out some great R&B records in the early 50s that sold well for him, but went on to provide worldwide hits for other artists. With Fats Domino sharing top billing with him at Lew Chudd‘s Imperial Records, the company used the pair as a ‘one-two…

KEB MO’

Keb Mo’s guitar style is firmly rooted in the Delta, his voice has an authentic Blues tone, and his songwriting speaks to modern concerns so, like his contemporaries Eric Bibb and Guy Davis, his work shows that the Blues is ‘alive and kicking’ in a form that would not sound out of place ninety years…

HOUSTON STACKHOUSE

Houston Stackhouse was a Delta slide-guitarist who would have been much more well known as a Bluesman if he had been prepared to play outside his native region. He did not record until late in his career, but he accompanied many of the great Delta players of his day, especially his cousin Robert Nighthawk. Houston…

PAT HARE

Pat Hare’s aggressive, distorted lead guitar work at Sun Studios in 1953 literally set the tone for Blues rock, Rockabilly and Heavy Metal players decades later. In fact Pat’s contribution to James Cotton‘s ‘Cotton Crop Blues’ with it’s heavy power-chords, is sometimes cited as the first ‘heavy metal solo’. Recruited by Muddy Waters in 1956,…

BO CARTER

Bo Carter was Delta Bluesman of rare distinction and originality. His skill as a guitarist saw him playing his intricate riffs in a variety of keys and tunings and his bawdy songs, dripping with sexual innuendo, made him one of the best selling country Blues artists of the 30s. With his family band, the Mississippi…

FRANK STOKES

Some Pioneers of the Blues are honoured and remembered, and some slip into obscurity, and it’s a shame that Frank Stokes has become one of the latter. He grew up playing the Blues before WWI, when it was just an obscure local folk music from the north of the Mississippi Delta, and his tremendous voice…