How Elmore James Invented Metal
By John Morthland, eMusic Contributor
Elmore James is often demeaned as a one-trick pony — or, in his case, a one lick pony. That would be the swooping, stinging slide guitar figure he played on "Dust My Broom," his first record, in 1951. He got it from Robert Johnson's 1936 "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom," and Johnson himself had adapted it from Kokomo Arnold's "Sagefield Woman Blues." But the lick is still known universally as "the Elmore James riff,"… more »