| These are the key blues artists who have so far influenced my early musical adventures. |
| Joe Bonamassa |  |
| Details: | | Born in upstate New York, Joe Bonamassa started playing guitar at the age of four. By eight he was playing the blues like a veteran. Says Bonamassa, "My father was a guitar dealer and player, so guitars were always around the house and part of my life. They were like chairs or tables, in that they were just as everyday." At ten, Joe began performing at local venues and at twelve, he was asked to open for B. B. King. The blues legend, after hearing Joe play for the first time, declared, "This kid's potential is unbelievable. He hasn't even begun to scratch the surface. He's one of a kind." |
| Bob Brozman |  |
| Details: | | Bob Brozman is a guitarist like no other: an established and prolific recording artist, performer, producer, and author, Bob is a non-stop world traveler and tireless researcher in ethnomusicology. His work with musicians from around the world in the past several years has marked him as not only a virtuoso musician and slide guitarist, but also as a pioneer in finding a common thread among global musical cultures. |
| Alvin Youngblood Hart |  |
| Details: | | Alvin "Youngblood" Hart (born 1963 in Oakland, California) is an American musician. Influenced in early childhood by the Mississippi Country Blues performed by older relatives, Hart is known as one of the world's foremost practitioners of that genre. Hart is also known as a faithful torchbearer for the 60's & 70's guitar rock of his youth, as well as Western Swing and vintage Country. His music has been compared to a list of diverse artists ranging from Leadbelly, Spade Cooley to Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy. He plays acoustic and electric guitars as well as banjo and sometimes mandolin. |
| Lightnin' Hopkins |  |
| Details: | | Sam Hopkins was a Texas country bluesman of the highest caliber whose career began in the 1920s and stretched all the way into the 1980s. Along the way, Hopkins watched
the genre change remarkably, but he never appreciably altered his mournful Lone Star sound, which translated onto both acoustic and electric guitar. Hopkins' nimble dexterity made intricate boogie riffs seem easy, and his fascinating penchant for improvising lyrics to fit whatever situation might arise made him a beloved blues troubadour. |
| Son House |  |
| Details: | | Born near Lyon, Mississippi, March 21, 1902, Son House chopped cotton as a teenager while developing a passion for the Baptist church. House shot and killed a man during a house party near Lyon in 1928. He was sentenced to work on Parchman Farm, but was released within two years after a judge in Clarksdale re-examined the case. House's powerful vocals and slashing slide guitar style established him as a giant of the Delta School but did not lead to commercial success. |
| Skip James |  |
| Details: | | James was born near Bentonia, Mississippi. As a youth, he heard local musicians such as Henry Stuckey and brothers Charlie and Jesse Sims and began playing the organ in his teens. He worked on road construction and levee-building crews in his native Mississippi in the early 1920s, and wrote what is perhaps his earliest song, "Illinois Blues", about his experiences as a laborer. Later in the '20s he sharecropped and made bootleg whiskey in the Bentonia area. He began playing guitar in open E-minor tuning and developed a three-finger picking technique that he would use to great effect on his recordings. In addition, he began to practice piano-playing, drawing inspiration from the Mississippi blues pianist Little Brother Montgomery. |
| Elmore James |  |
| Details: | | Elmore James was an inspiration in the development of Rock ‘n’ Roll. As a young but talented musician, he shaped the sound and style of music in Mississippi. Elmore’s urge to play a guitar aided in his goal of becoming a star. His mother is one reason for his success. She encouraged Elmore to do what he enjoyed and to succeed in his choice of a career. With this encouragement, Elmore began to play a self-made guitar. James moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he formed a new band called The Broomdusters. The Broomdusters are known for such hits as “Dust My Broom,” “It Hurts Me Too,” and “The Sky Is Crying.” Throughout the years Elmore recorded more than one hundred songs for various record companies, including Modern, Chess, Chief, Fire, Fury, and Enjoy Records. He is known as the King of the Slide, and he helped to shape the rural sounds of the Mississippi Delta Blues into what became Rock ‘n’ Roll. |
| Robert Johnson |  |
| Details: | | Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous Delta Blues musicians and arguably the most influential. Considered by some to be the "Grandfather of Rock-and-Roll," his vocal phrasing, original songs, and guitar style influenced a range of musicians, including Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, U2, and Eric Clapton, who called Johnson "the most important blues musician who ever lived." |
| Blind Willie Johnson |  |
| Details: | | Blind Willie Johnson was arguably the greatest and most popular "sanctified" singer to record in the pre-World War II era. His forceful singing and stunning guitar work ensured that he continued to sell records even into the Depression. Johnson favoured a ragged, antiphonal approach to his singing, in which he usually employed a marked false bass, and when performing alone he used his guitar as the second voice, often leaving it to complete his own vocal lines. He could finger-pick, but is most famous for his outstanding slide technique. Possibly his most well-known piece today is the free-form guitar impersonation of a congregation moaning "Dark Was The Night And Cold The Ground", which was used in its original form in Pasolini's film The Gospel According To Saint Matthew and adapted by Ry Cooder as the theme music to Paris, Texas. Johnson lived his later years in Beaumont, Texas, and it was there that his house caught fire some time in the 40s. Johnson survived the fire but returned to the house and slept on a wet mattress covered by newspapers. This resulted in the pneumonia that killed him. |
| Catfish Keith |  |
| Details: | | Cutting-edge blues singer, songwriter and slide guitarist Catfish Keith was born in East Chicago, Indiana on February 9th, 1962. He first heard blues as a child while living in "The Harbor," a working-class, steel mill town, hearing Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Buddy Guy on the radio. When he picked up the guitar as a teenager, he was inspired to pursue the deep delta blues after being converted by Son House. Following high school in Davenport, Iowa, Catfish hit the road, embarking on a lifelong quest as a solo performer of American roots music. |
| Keb' Mo' |  |
| Details: | | Born Kevin Moore on the West Coast, 'Keb 'Mo's parents came from Texas and Louisiana and instilled within him an early appreciation of blues and gospel. He draws heavily on the country blues style of Robert Johnson but has increasingly broadened the musical landscape over a series of well received albums throughout the 90s and beyond. He writes much of his own material and this has allowed him to add a high quality contemporary feel to his recordings whilst at the same time playing homage to the past with occasional, fine reworkings of blues standards, including excellent versions of Robert Johnson material. |
| Joe Price |  |
| Details: | | Joe Price has the stories to back up his music’s soul. To hear the slide guitarist talk about his life – learning to play by watching Chicago blues guitarist, Earl Hooker; falling in love with his wife, Vicki, after she played music with him in a bar; nearly severing his left hand in high school and taking five years to learn to play again – is like listening to a fairy tale. Joe Price was born to play the blues. |
| Johnny Shines |  |
| Details: | | He was born John Ned Shines on April 26, 1915 in Frazier, Tennessee. He spent most of his childhood in Memphis playing slide guitar at an early age in local “jukes” and for tips on the streets. His first musical influences were Blind Lemon Jefferson and Howlin’ Wolf, but he was taught to play the guitar by his mother. Shines moved to Hughes, Arkansas in 1932 and worked on farms for three years putting his musical career on hold. But it was a chance meeting with Robert Johnson, his greatest influence, that gave him the inspiration to return to music. In 1935, Johnny Shines began traveling with Robert Johnson, touring the south and heading as far north as Ontario. There, they both appeared on a local radio program. The two went their separate ways in 1937, one year before Johnson’s death. |
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