teletail
Poster Extraordinaire
Another millennial with google writing an article on a abject they know nothing about.
5 most influential blues musicians of all time....
- Thread starter rjtwangs
- Start date
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arlum
Friend of Leo's
My oh my. How '60s of you.
Most Influential doesn't mean first or earliest.
Just my opinion ....
Albert King
Roy Buchanan
SRV
Buddy Guy
Muddy Waters
I read the liner notes.
The credits.
On all the white boy second/third gen records we all listened to .
So, when Howlin’ Wolf mentioned, “Hubert”, while he was teaching Clapton, Little red rooster, I said, I gotta find out who Hubert is. I think he’s the guy doing all these crazy snaky leads.
Otherwise, I would’ve just been stuck with “Clapton”.
And would have never heard the Rocking Chair Lp .
The credits.
On all the white boy second/third gen records we all listened to .
So, when Howlin’ Wolf mentioned, “Hubert”, while he was teaching Clapton, Little red rooster, I said, I gotta find out who Hubert is. I think he’s the guy doing all these crazy snaky leads.
Otherwise, I would’ve just been stuck with “Clapton”.
And would have never heard the Rocking Chair Lp .
FortuneTele
Tele-Afflicted
FortuneTele
Tele-Afflicted
Here's my favorite white boy blues guitar player.
Sean Costello
R.I.P.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-9l_XkDqc8
Sean Costello
R.I.P.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-9l_XkDqc8
getrguy1
Tele-Holic
They're all great....
Freddie King
Freddie King
memorex
Poster Extraordinaire
The five I listened to most when I was learning to play guitar:
The Kings - B.B., Albert, Freddie
Eric Clapton
Jimi Hendrix
The Kings - B.B., Albert, Freddie
Eric Clapton
Jimi Hendrix
They're five of the best. I think of Lead Belly and Cotten as folksingers, but they've certainly inspired a lot of blues artists.
The five I'd name:
- Willie Dixon
- Robert Johnson
- Ma Rainey
- Bessie Smith
- Muddy Waters
The five I'd name:
- Willie Dixon
- Robert Johnson
- Ma Rainey
- Bessie Smith
- Muddy Waters
I'll happily go along with Johnson as a first-generation influence and Dixon, Walker and Little Walter as a second- or third-generation influencers.
And that's five. I'd leave it there. Vaughn is just too far removed from the sources. He's certainly influenced a lot of blues rockers (people who think "Wonderful Tonight" is blues), but blues rock isn't blues.
If we could ask him who his influences were, he'd certainly mention the other five.
Hm. I'm not going to read the article. We can tell by the list that the writer is talking about bygone acoustic instrument recording artists. Which is fine, even though it doesn't include the immortal B.B.
Cotten is about as contemporary as the list gets and was not so much a blues artist as a folksinger whose repertoire included blues. Likewise, Holiday sang great blues, but her influence is mainly in jazz.
So I'd swap them out for Bessie Smith. And I'd throw in Big Mama Thornton, if only because she wrote "Hound Dog," which Elvis turned into one of the all-time most influential R&R tunes.
The most influential Blues musicians are probably the ones who influenced the rockers who sold the most records...Muddy, Wolf, Johnson, BB, Albert.
wulfenganck
Friend of Leo's
These lists are utter nonsense.
I can name artists that were highly influential on me, that's it. Others may not care about them and name different one's, so be it. I may have heard about those, but they never had any impact on me, so I may acknowledge their importance, but they never had any influence on me. And probably those "founding fathers and mothers of blues" had someone else teaching them.....so who cares?
For what it's worth my favorites in no particular order:
Blind Boy Fuller,
Lizzy "Memphis Minnie" Douglas,
Son House,
Seasick Steve,
Bonnie Raitt.
I can name artists that were highly influential on me, that's it. Others may not care about them and name different one's, so be it. I may have heard about those, but they never had any impact on me, so I may acknowledge their importance, but they never had any influence on me. And probably those "founding fathers and mothers of blues" had someone else teaching them.....so who cares?
For what it's worth my favorites in no particular order:
Blind Boy Fuller,
Lizzy "Memphis Minnie" Douglas,
Son House,
Seasick Steve,
Bonnie Raitt.
Jimi Hendrix
Eric Clapton
Peter Green
Billy Gibbons
BB King
Honorable mention:
SRV
ducking ……….
Eric Clapton
Peter Green
Billy Gibbons
BB King
Honorable mention:
SRV
ducking ……….
If you see gear in the picture of any Chicago blues musician in the 50s, you very often see pawn shop and/or catalog and dept store guitars and amps .
You would very often see Premier Amps, and you would rarely see those amps in pictures of any other bands, except for maybe lower tier, cowboy bands.
And I’m not saying that Hubert maybe didn’t grow accustomed to that Guitar - even grew to like it , but my point is, the vast vast majority of those dudes would have rather been playing, top-tier Fender Gibson equipment.
The so-so equipment was simply an economic reality.
Heck, BB King made the leap as soon as he could afford it.
According to research done by Elijah Wald in his book on the realities of 30s blues musicians, Blind Boy Fuller, was according to most sales records and jukebox company receipts, the biggest selling blues artist of the 30s.
I always liked him too plus every single thing he ever recorded ? He’s playing a national duolian steel bodied resonator.
Lou Tencodpees
Poster Extraordinaire
"5" seems a pretty arbitrary number, credibility and interest goes out the door with "most". "Influential" is so hard to quantify, PhD or not. The 5 listed seem to be a compilation aiming to not exclude women, not saying they didn't have their place in Blues history. But as pointed out many times now, no Willie Dixon? No Howlin' Wolf? Or even Jimmy Reed, etc.
Nah.
Nah.
wulfenganck
Friend of Leo's
Well, Blind Boy Fuller and Memphis Minnie were the main reasons for me to try out a resonator!
Nice !
I haven’t seen this awesome picture in a long time but I forgot it was a rolled F-hole Duolian (nerd detail) but I always remember that neck destroying 30s capo he’s got clamped on there !
2HBStrat
Poster Extraordinaire
Without those guys that I listed, Clapton, Green, Mayall, Bloomfield and Butterfield, who, except for Butterfield and Bloomfield, picked up the blues in England and sent it back to us in a blues/rock form, the blues as a genre might have ceased to exist. We should also add Alexis Korner and the Rolling Stones to the list and make it 7. All of those younger British players, and you can include Jack Bruce, played with Alexis Korner and learned to love the blues through him. If he hadn't liked the blues and had a band that played blues and used all of those young English players who knows how different music might be today.My oh my. How '60s of you.
Most Influential doesn't mean first or earliest.
Just my opinion ....
Albert King
Roy Buchanan
SRV
Buddy Guy
Muddy Waters
