Southern-rock guitarist Duane Allman was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1946. Allman was inspired to take up the guitar by his brother Gregg. At first, they played country music, their initiation into the blues coming when the brothers saw B.B. King performing in Nashville. The pair began playing professionally in 1961, first in The Allman Joys ...
Few groups made as powerful an impression on American blues music in the early 1970s as The Allman Brothers Band. Its blend of blues, jazz, rock and country elements was a predominant sound on nascent FM radio and influenced countless bands that followed in their wake. The Allman Brothers Band have endured tragedies, periods of obscurity and personnel ...
(Vocal group, 1969–76, 1978–82, 1989–present) A southern American blues-rock band comprising Duane Allman (guitar), Gregg Allman (vocals, organ), Dickey Betts (guitar, vocals), Berry Oakley (bass), Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny ‘Jaimoe’ Johanson (both drums). The Allmans’ incendiary double lead guitar sound was captured on Live At The Fillmore East (1971). Despite the deaths of Duane Allman ...
Warren Haynes was born in Asheville, North Carolina in 1960. He began to play the guitar at age 12. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Johnny Winter were early influences. ‘I would read interviews with all these people and find out who they listened to,’ Haynes has said. ‘And they all listened to B.B. King and Freddie King ...
(Vocals, b. 1948) Although over time the name Alice Cooper came to attach itself to singer Vincent Furnier, it originally applied to the rock band that he fronted, the classic line-up of which comprised Cooper, Glen Buxton (guitar), Michael Bruce (guitar), Dennis Dunaway (bass) and Neal Smith (drums). After recording two albums for Frank Zappa’s Straight label ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1939) Shaver arrived in Nashville in 1968, sold songs to Kris Kristofferson and Tom T. Hall, and wrote all but one song on Waylon Jennings’ 1973 album Honky Tonk Heroes. That led to Shaver’s own debut later the same year with Old Five And Dimers Like Me. Shaver had his songs recorded by Elvis ...
(Vocals, guitar, fiddle, b. 1936) Daniels was a North Carolina rock’n’roller who had a song cut by Elvis Presley and who played on Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline. Daniels formed his own band in 1972, modelled on the southern rock of The Allman Brothers Band, and had a hit with the 1973 tall tale, ‘Uneasy Rider’ ...
Derek Trucks was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1979. Trucks bought his first guitar at a yard sale for $5 at age nine and became a child prodigy, playing his first paid performance at age 11. Trucks began playing the guitar using a ‘slide’ bar because it allowed him to play the guitar with his small hands. By his ...
Southern blues-rock guitarist Dickey Betts was born in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1943. Betts was leading a group called The Second Coming when he met and jammed with the other members of what soon became The Allman Brothers Band. His role as second lead guitarist and his partnership with Duane Allman gave the band their trademark dual-lead sound, ...
The swooping, full-octave slide-guitar riff that opened Elmore James’s (1918–63) first record, ‘Dust My Broom’, in 1951 not only electrified the legacy of Robert Johnson, it also established one of the basic riffs of post-war blues. Bottleneck guitar had always been part of the blues, but James was the first to use it in a hard rocking ...
The most famous living guitarist in the world, Eric Clapton’s career has passed through an extraordinary series of highs and lows during his long reign as a guitar hero. He has also experimented with numerous stylistic changes, but has always returned to his first love, the blues. A love child born in 1945, Clapton was brought up ...
(Vocals, piano, guitar, 1945–2003) Kentucky-born Stewart first recorded in 1964, and was a member of rock band The Amps. He co-wrote Stonewall Jackson’s 1965 country hit, ‘Poor Red Georgia Dirt’, and several for Billy Walker and others before signing to RCA in 1973. His first country hit was a cover of The Allman Brothers Band’s ‘Ramblin’ ...
Pigeonholed as the ‘quiet one’, misunderstood as an adopter of Eastern religion and music, and overshadowed (sometimes maligned) by his prolific, trail-blazing bandmates Lennon and McCartney, George Harrison (1943–2001) might have become a footnote in musical history. But as a member of The Beatles, Harrison made the words ‘lead guitar’ a household term and steadily developed as ...
Although routinely – and fairly – described as the father of country music, Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933) was actually something more. Having established himself in that genre, he gradually moved towards mainstream popular music and, but for his early death, would probably have found a niche there. So far as country music is concerned, though, his ...
Joe Bonamassa, born in 1977, began playing guitar at the age of four on a small instrument given to him by his father. By the age of seven, he was playing Stevie Ray Vaughan songs on a full-size guitar. Bonamassa began performing in upstate New York at the age of 10 and was discovered by the blues great ...
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