The Devil and the Blues

“AS A RACE, we didn’t have much to choose from

IN THE BEGINNING

ROBERT JOHNSON, Son House, Lead Belly, Memphis Minnie, Charley Patton,

GOING BACK HOME

1970 WAS TO be B.B. King’s year. As his 1969

THE BLUES-ROCK BOOM

“THE BLUES HAD a baby,” goes the old Muddy Waters

LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL

THE WORD LEGEND is one of the most overused terms

OLD BLUES, NEW TRICKS

AFTER THE 1960s blues boom, the genre began to lose

WE ARE FAMILY

AS ROCK AND ROLL provenance goes, it’s pretty hard to

DUST DEVIL

THE GREAT DEPRESSION of early 1930s America spared no one

STEEL BRIDGES

IT’S INTERESTING HOW similar yet different the worlds of nylon-string

Twenty Flight Rocker

IT MIGHT SEEM an odd juxtaposition of standards that a

Soul Train

“I’M A FAN of guitar playing, but I am more

Blues Boomer

WALTER TROUT IS the ultimate blues survivor. At the time

My Career in Five Songs

THROUGHOUT HIS REMARKABLY sturdy 50-plus-year career, Robin Trower has often

Lover’s Leap

FENDER FIRST CONCEIVED a fancied-up version of the stalwart Telecaster

Blues at 90 MPH

MICHAEL LEONARD MANN, a.k.a. Hollywood Fats, was born in Los

The New Blues Explosion

FOR A GENRE so deeply and tragically entrenched in history,

Passing the Blues

AT THE TENDER age of 15, Marcus King attempted to

Path to Finger Freedom

LAST MONTH’S COLUMN focused on different ways to use the

PRS

THE LATEST ADDITION to the SE Hollowbody II line features

Furch

FURCH (PRONOUNCED “FURK”) is a well-known European manufacturer that’s been

Tascam

RECORDING STRICTLY WITHIN the digital realm can be a real

Celestion

MANY POPULAR 12-INCH guitar speakers are based on classics made

Assorted Love Letters

I’m about six months behind on my reading of Guitar

All the Gear That Matters

Summer’s here, and that means it’s time once again for

How I Wrote… “Mississippi Queen”

LESLIE WEST IS decidedly modest when it comes to “Mississippi