T-Bone Walker - The Electric Guitar Pioneer
You could be forgiven for not looking into T-Bone Walker if you’re not a Texas Blues or early Chicago blues fan. The time of his appearance on the blues scene and name could easily have you lumping him in with others who you may have listened to and maybe not appreciated at the time. That’s what I did. But I was wrong and you would be too.
B.B. King himself has stated that T-Bone Walker was his primary influence. Even that only scratches the surface of what T-Bone Walker gave us. T-Bone popularized the lead electric guitar. His blues spanned jazz, swing, doo wop and early rock. His riffs echo in the playing of Freddie King, Chuck Berry and Jimmy Rogers. Make no mistake, T-Bone Walker changed the world of blues and left an indelible mark on many modern music genres. He also played his guitar in a way cool way horizontally out in front of his body. Here’s a great example.
T-Bone was a consummate musician who wrote musical scores. His blues do not sound like those handed down through the ages. I find it fascinating that one of my favorite blues songs of all time was “borrowed” by Jimmy Rogers and in fact was a T-Bone Walker tune. Check this out
Yeah, Jimmy Rogers “Walkin’ By Myself” is really different lyrics to a T-Bone Walker song called “Why Not”! In just those first few bars you can hear more music than most of us generate in a lifetime. Another great T-Bone tune is Stormy Monday. Stormy Monday has been covered by almost every blues and jazz musician as well as almost any rock band from the early 70’s. As a matter of fact if you search for an MP3 of Stormy Monday on Amazon.com you’ll get 645 hits.
OK so the list of T-Bone Walker recommended recordings is pretty long but here are just a few:
T-Bone Blues
The Complete Recordings of T-bone Walker 1940-1954
- this is a 6 CD set that covers from 1940 to 1954.
Blues Masters: The Very Best of T-Bone Walker
- this is single CD collection for those wanting the abridged version of The Complete Recordings. It comes highly recommended by Club Koda co-author of Blues for Dummies.
Here is a real treat for blues fans - this video is 25 minutes of a TV concert featuring T-Bone Walker and a young B.B. King.
T-Bone Walker and B.B. King
Musicians who were influenced by Albert King include Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall and Mike Bloomfield but, no where is the influence more apparent than when listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn. As a matter of fact one of the most enjoyable CD’s to just lay back and give a listen to is the 
album where SRV and Albert King play together (something Albert King was clearly enjoying).
Here are some mp3s available to preview and purchase on Amazon.com.
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“. It was probably my first experience where I realized I was listening to a genre of music rather than just music. Later Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter and Rick Derringer came to town opening for Alice Cooper’s Eighteen tour. That was my first concert. I’ve a couple of other aha moments in my life that involve Johnny Winter too. So in honor of this great blues man I decided to do some programming and have my own progressive blues experiment. Here is the result: every Johnny Winter album cover I could get automatically downloaded (and I few I could not) with a script I wrote. I’d like to take this experiment further and would love your suggestions. For now just enjoy the art, maybe someday I’ll have a quilt made of it. 
