(Guitar, vocals, 1893–1958) A powerful guitarist and prolific composer, Big Bill Broonzy linked the Mississippi delta blues of Robert Johnson with the electrified Chicago sound of Muddy Waters and others. Broonzy was recognized early on by the nascent folk music movement in the 1940s. Underappreciated in America, he gained a wide following in Europe through live performances and made lasting impressions on guitarists like George Harrison and Eric Clapton, who recorded ...
A pivotal figure in the transition from blues to rock’n’roll, Bo Diddley was born Elias Bates in McComb, Mississippi in 1928. When he was seven, the family relocated to Chicago, where he took violin lessons before switching to guitar, inspired by John Lee Hooker. He began by playing on street corners, then in the Hipsters. In 1951, he secured a regular gig at the 708 Club in Chicago’s South Side, the ...
One of the young gunslingers who invigorated the blues in the 1960s, Buddy Guy (b. 1936) wowed audiences with high-octane guitar histrionics and energy that were matched by a tortured vocal manner. Guy is a master of dynamics, allowing a song to drift towards oblivion before suddenly bringing it back to a crescendo of intensity. Notable fans have included Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Guy is essentially a live ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1910–76) Howlin’ Wolf was born Chester Burnett in West Point, Mississippi, and learned the blues from Charley Patton and harmonica from Sonny Boy Williamson, who married his half-sister. After the Army, he began performing around West Memphis, Arkansas, wowing fans with his aggressive vocals and newfangled electric guitar. Promoting himself on local radio, he was heard by Sam Phillips, who cut Wolf’s first sides at Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service. ...
(Guitar, 1943–81) Once a mainstay of Chicago’s Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the shorter-lived Electric Flag, Bloomfield was a prime mover in an apparent shift towards recognition for individual players rather than groups in the late 1960s. Joined by guitarist Stephen Stills and organist Al Kooper, his modestly titled Super Session was the best-selling CBS album of 1968. An in-concert offering with Kooper and a solo album, It’s Not Killing Me, ...
Muddy Waters (1915–83) is the vital link between the pre-war Delta blues and the post-war Chicago blues. Born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, he grew up on Stovall’s Plantation near Clarksdale and became steeped in the slide-guitar blues of Son House and Robert Johnson. In 1941, he was recorded by archivist Alan Lomax, playing ‘Country Blues’ and ‘I’s Be Troubled’. Two years later, Waters moved north to Chicago, following the general migration. ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1913–83) Born McKinley Morgenfield in Mississippi, Muddy Waters was first recorded by musicologist Alan Lomax. Waters’ first recording for Lomax, ‘I Be’s Troubled’, would become his first hit when he recorded it in Chicago as ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied’ (1948). By 1951, Waters was on the R&B charts consistently with tunes like ‘Louisiana Blues’, and ‘Long Distance Call’. In 1952, he created the smash ‘She Moves Me’, and later came ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1910–75) Dallas-bred Aaron Walker was soloing on electric guitar as early as 1940, setting a trend that would eventually be the most commonplace image in rock music. B.B. King marvelled at Walker’s ability to play while holding the guitar away from his body. Walker left Texas in the 1930s and alternated between sessions and performances in Los Angeles, Chicago and, later, Europe, as he advanced the instrumental appeal of ...
The first bluesman to record with an electric guitar, T-Bone Walker (1910–75) shaped the course of post-war blues, influencing everyone from B.B. King and Chuck Berry to Jimi Hendrix and beyond. B.B. King acknowledges that the first time he heard Walker, he knew he had to get an electric guitar, and Berry and Hendrix took as much notice of Walker’s showmanship – playing his guitar behind his head and generally thrilling ...
Chicago blues is a raw, rough-and-tumble music, defined by slashing, Delta-rooted electric slide guitars, raunchy-toned harmonicas overblown into handheld microphones to the point of distortion, uptempo shuffled rummers, insistently walking bass players and declamatory, soulful vocalists who imbued the tunes with Southern gospel fervour. It became a universally recognized sound by the 1960s, fuelling the British blues movement in the early part of the decade (spearheaded by Alexis Korner, Cyril Davies, ...
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Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.