Let me tell you about Let Me Tell You About the Blues, a series of three-disc packages (several of which are available on eMusic) that attempts to trace the evolution of the music by focusing on geographic areas. Results are mixed, as they almost always are on compilations, in this case due largely to the fact that anything recorded in a specific city or region is defined as belonging to that area. To cite one… more »
Postwar, electric blues guitar in Texas all derives from T-Bone Walker, says conventional wisdom, and when you hear a great stylist like Pee Wee Crayton soloing in that jazzy, single-string tradition, it seems like an immutable law. But there were Texas guitarists who weren't influenced by Walker, and most who were brought enough of their own thing to T-Bone's to keep it interesting. Even today, the tradition not only lives on, but continues to evolve.… more »
They grew up together in Houston's rough-and-tumble Third Ward, played in bands together as teenagers. Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland and Joe Hughes were all devotees of the classic Texas electric guitar sound of T-Bone Walker and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. But all three absorbed their primary influences early on, and took the sound to three strikingly different places.
Collins was the first to emerge nationally. In the late '50s and early '60s, he cut a string of… more »
