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Electric blues

Electric blues is blues music distinguished by the use of electric amplification for musical instruments. The guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers T-Bone Walker in the late 1930s and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters in the 1940s. Their styles developed into West Coast blues, Detroit blues, and post-World War II Chicago blues, which differed from earlier, predominantly acoustic-style blues. By the early 1950s, Little Walter was a featured soloist on blues harmonica using a small hand-held microphone fed into a guitar amplifier. Although it took a little longer, the electric bass guitar gradually replaced the stand-up bass by the early 1960s. Electric organs and especially keyboards later became widely used in electric blues.

Electric blues

Late 1930s, United States

Contemporary electric blues[edit]

Since the end of the 1960s, electric blues has declined in mainstream popularity, but retained a strong following in the US, Britain and elsewhere, with many musicians that began their careers as early as the 1950s continuing to record and perform, occasionally producing breakthrough stars.[47] In the 1970s and 1980s, it absorbed a number of different influences, including particularly rock and soul music.[47] Stevie Ray Vaughan was the biggest star influenced by blues rock and opened the way for guitarists including Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Jonny Lang.[48] Practitioners of soul-influenced electric blues in the 1970s and 1980s included Joe Louis Walker and most successfully Robert Cray, whose Strong Persuader album (1986), with its fluid guitar sound and an intimate vocal style, produced a major crossover hit.[47] Veteran Linsey Alexander is known for his original Chicago blues influenced by soul, R&B, and funk.[49][50]


Since her breakthrough commercial success Nick of Time (1989), Bonnie Raitt has been one of the leading artists in acoustic and electric blues, doing much to promote the profile of older blues artists.[51] After the renewed success of John Lee Hooker with his collaborative album The Healer (1989),[52] several artists began to return to electric blues, including Gary Moore, beginning with Still Got the Blues (1990)[53] and Eric Clapton with From the Cradle (1994).[54]

List of electric blues musicians