Please recommend some blues guitarists...

Those guys are more blues/rock than blues.

 

Me.

 

Tony (T.S.) McPhee

 

The late John Campbell (no idea why the video shows the wrong album cover)

 

My favorite acoustic blues guitarist is John Hammond Jr.
Favorite electric blues is Stevie Ray Vaughan
Can't say it doesn't get better than them, there are so many wonderful players and one of my joys in life is exploring the different players and styles. have fun.

 

Richard Johnston

 

In the environment of British blues I think Peter Green is essential, you can listen to any of their albums of the 60's with Fleetwood Mac (all are incredible). Calpton is a classic (especially with John Mayall and Cream)
Mick Taylor with John Mayall has great work (especially Crusade)

In America every bluesman are essential; each with its own style ... Muddy Waters, BB King, Buddy Guy (especially his early work) and a great guitarist "Roy Buchanan" a really unappreciated player for many (I recommend especially the Atlantic Years)

Shuggie Otis is really good and Mike Bloomfield too (fantastic)... There are so many great blues players in America.

 

The OP mentioned "dirty and distorted" guitar...

Yes/yes/yes/yes/yes. (Especially Hubert Sumlin's riff on Howlin' Wolf's Smokestack Lightning.)

...and yes/yes. Add some Guitar Slim, Magic Sam and Hound Dog Taylor (as others have posted) and you're set.

Speaking of Otis Rush, this older track starts with another one of THE classic blues riffs of all time:

 

This is exactly the type of list I too was looking for. Thank You! The problem I have had is the shear volume of stuff. Say BB King ....what do you possibly start with?

 

Yeah, Howlin Wolf's guitar player was Hubert Sumlin, IIRC, and there's some down and dirty guitar playing for sure on that early stuff -- the 2-fer that's pretty much the standard release now of the rocking chair album and Moanin in the Moonlight is usually cheap.

Look out for Born Under a Bad Sign by Albert King. (or his King of the Blues Guitar, which includes that whole album and some more tracks) You'll hear King's influence on almost everyone who came after him.

 

+1

Bluesbreakers (Clapton), Crusade, and Hard Road are all essential. The latter two feature Mick Taylor and Peter Green (I forget which on which album). For white boy blues, you can't beat it, and you have so many places to go from there - including Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac.

 

BB's Live at the Regal has been mentioned. It's not as dirty as what you might want, but it's brilliant. And the crowd is great.

Muddy Waters -- you can choose the Chess His Best discs. For him, I like His Best 1947 to 1956. He's raw and mean and absolutely essential for anyone getting into the blues.

Don't be nervous about the volume. It just means you'll be busy for years and years sampling it all. Buy a month on spotify, if you need to do so. $11 well spent to sample all these artists.

 

Lotta good stuff on here:


http://www.amazon.com/Cobra-Records...cords+Story:+Chicago+Rock+and+Blues+1956-1958

 

Blues is all blue, man.

 

To my ears, the three blues guitarists that would have the most influence on blues-rock guitarists are:

T-Bone Walker because he was one of the first successful electric blues guitarists and a primary influence on Chuck Berry, who on turn was a primary influence on Beatles and Stones et al.

Elmore James because his tone and slide accents were adopted by the Duane Allman and Peter Green.

Both of them had songs popularized by the rockers as well.

And finally Albert King because the guitar he used, the lefty orientation and heavy string bending were taken by Jimi Hendrix.

 

Fair enough. If ya got soul, ya got soul.

 

Stevie Ray Vaughan once said that most of the time he tried to adapt Albert King's style to any song.

 

The old blues purists from the sixties would probably argue that. Some of the old blues books and magazines didn't even list white blues players at all. They were not viewed as authentic.

 

Technical abilities aside, sometimes TONE trumps speed or fancy licks. To me the Jack White/Black Keys sound that the OP mentioned is more elementary, like this:

 

Which is a great irony, because it was Keef/Mick/Brian, Green, Mayall, Clapton, and so many of those English guys who are responsible for their renaissance. The ones who were still alive, like Muddy and Sonny Boy II, got a second chance at getting paid. And the ones who had passed, like Robert Johnson, got a second chance at being remembered.

That doesn't make them "legit", I know. But it does warrant some respect surely?

I don't know. I wasn't there.

 

Players like Hound Dog Taylor, J.B. Hutto, Elmore James & Lil' Ed are sort like the garage/rock versions of blues players. Loose and ragged but the better for it.

 

It is Alexis Korner and John Mayall who are responsible for the British rock scene period. Most every musician in ever British rock and/or blues band at one time had something to do with one or the other of them. If you follow the lineage of British blues and British rock bands, in normally lead back to those two guys.

 

It was a 2 way street. The white artists covered or in some cases stole their songs but it helped the old blues players become better known by fans of the white players who then sought out the original versions and became interested in the original artists as well.

 

Want some attitude? I just came across this one the other day while watching Festival Express.

 

Not all of them. People like Tony McPhee and the Groundhogs were backing up blues musicians like John Lee Hooker and Billy Boy Arnold on albums or in concert for example. Paul Kossoff was playing on albums by Champion Jack Dupree.