B.B. King once said that T-Bone Walker was the one who "really got me wanting to play the blues. I can still T-Bone in my mind today ever since I first heard 'Storm Monday.' He was the first electric guitar player I heard on a record. He made me go out and get an electric guitar."

Modern electric guitar playing can be traced back to T-Bone Walker who started amplifying his led lines in 1940 and initiated a blues revolution so powerful that it's aftershock is still being felt today. Few post-war blues guitarists own an unpayable debt of gratitude to T-Bone. B.B. King marveled at his tendency to hold the body of the guitar outward while playing it.

Other blues guitarists like Pee Wee Crayton, Goree Carter and Gatemouth Brown all came right out of T-Bone's style in the late '40s and the early '50s. Even Walker's nephew, R.S. Rankin went so far as to call himself the next T-Bone Walker even through he and his uncle had worked together before. Walker was also the first electric guitarist who played the guitar with his teeth.

With his passing in 1975, T-Bone left behind no written sighs of praise that could convey the importance of what he gave to the blues and later rock n' roll, but since then, guitar players from Albert Collins and Buddy Guy to Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan have drawn from T-Bone's powerful playing style.

Posted by Andrew on Saturday, 07/6/2013 @ 20:50pm