Electric Blues

When T-Bone Walker had the foresight to amplify his guitar during the late '30s, he effected the most crucial stylistic advancement in blues history. T-Bone was the first electric blues guitar hero, and there have been a slew of them since. During the '40s and '50s, electrified guitars and harmonicas escorted the blues into the modern age.

The postwar era elicited an avalanche of seminal electric blues wax from Chicago, Memphis, Los Angeles, and New York, and saw the guitar ascend as the primary blues instrument of choice. It's no accident that so many of these blues luminaries, and '80s revivalists like Stevie Ray Vaughan, slung a Gibson or Fender across their shoulders.

Even after rock 'n' roll made it a lot tougher for veteran bluesmen to post major hits, they kept on making great records for the faithful who dug their slashing guitar solos and vocals fraught with livewire emotional intensity. Blast these prime slabs of blues as loud as your stereo allows, and feel the full effect of their author's virtuosity.

In the U.S.A. at the end of World War II, people started relocating to big cities in search of new jobs, some of them packing old-time Delta blues traditions. Only, by this time, they were running their guitars through amps, and filling out their live sound with drums, bass, and piano. The brash ferocity of the first electric blues masters is revealed here, alongside those who kept the flame burning and who, like the great B.B. King, retain the magic in their frets to this day.