Acoustic or electric, country or urban, slow or swinging — the blues speaks many dialects.
The oldest recorded blues style — one voice, one guitar, often a bottleneck on the strings. Born on the porches and in the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta.
Raw, intimate, mournful, percussive
Robert Johnson · Son House · Charley Patton · Skip James
What happened when the Great Migration carried the Delta north — and the guitar got plugged into an amplifier. The DNA of every rock band since.
Loud, urban, swinging, electric
Muddy Waters · Howlin' Wolf · Little Walter · Buddy Guy
Where blues meets jazz and swing. Long, fluid single-note guitar lines and a tighter, hornier rhythm section.
Smooth, jazzy, swinging, single-note solos
T-Bone Walker · Freddie King · Stevie Ray Vaughan · ZZ Top
British teenagers heard Muddy's Chess records and tried to play them louder. Out came the entire 60s rock revolution.
Reverent, loud, virtuosic, white-knuckled
John Mayall · Eric Clapton · Peter Green · Rolling Stones
An East-coast cousin of the Delta — finger-picked, ragtime-tinged, often happier in feel.
Bouncy, ragtime-influenced, melodic
Blind Blake · Reverend Gary Davis · Mississippi John Hurt
The bridge from swing to rock and roll. Big-band energy, blues changes, and a horn section that never stops.
Up-tempo, danceable, jazz-flavoured
Louis Jordan · Big Joe Turner · Wynonie Harris
Where the church meets the juke joint — gospel vocals over a blues 12-bar with horns and Hammond.
Smooth, gospel-rooted, romantic
Bobby Bland · B.B. King · Z.Z. Hill · Etta James
Today's torchbearers — drawing on every era, plugged into modern amps and modern audiences.
High-fidelity, eclectic, rock-influenced
Joe Bonamassa · Gary Clark Jr. · Larkin Poe · Walter Trout
