Electric Blues - Blues-rock

Blues-rock

The distinction between electric blues and blues-rock is a very difficult one and many artists have been classified in both camps. With some notable exceptions, blues-rock has largely been played by white musicians, bringing a rock sensitivity to blues standards and forms and it played a major role in widening the appeal of the blues to white American audiences.

In 1963 American guitarist Lonnie Mack had developed the guitar style which prefigured with blues-rock, releasing several full-length rock guitar instrumentals strongly grounded in the blues, the best-known of which are the hit singles "Memphis" (Billboard #5) and "Wham!" (Billboard #24). However, blues-rock was not considered a distinct movement within rock until the advent of such British bands as Fleetwood Mac, Free, Savoy Brown and the groups formed around the three major guitarists that emerged from the Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

Eric Clapton had a lasting influence on the genre; after leaving the Yardbirds and his work John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, he formed supergroups Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos, followed by an extensive solo career that has been seminal in bringing blues-rock into the mainstream. In the late '60s Jeff Beck revolutionised blues rock into a form of heavy rock with his band, The Jeff Beck Group. Jimmy Page went on to form The New Yardbirds which would soon become Led Zeppelin. Many of the song on their first two albums and occasionally later in their careers, were expansions on traditional blues songs.

The British and blues musicians of the early 1960s inspired a number of American blues-rock fusion performers, including Paul Butterfield, Canned Heat, the early Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, The J. Geils Band and Ry Cooder. The revolutionary electric guitar playing of Jimi Hendrix (a veteran of many American rhythm & blues and soul groups from the early-mid 1960s) and his power trios, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Band of Gypsys, had broad and lasting influence on the development of blues-rock, especially for guitarists. Blues-rock bands like Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd and eventually ZZ Top from the southern states, incorporated country elements into their style to produce Southern rock.

Early blues-rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long, involved improvisations and by about 1967 bands like Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience had begun to move into psychedelia. By the 1970s blues-rock had become heavier and more riff-based, exemplified by the work of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, and the lines between blues-rock and hard rock "were barely visible", as bands began recording rock-style albums. The genre was continued in the 1970s by figures such as George Thorogood and Pat Travers, but, particularly on the British scene, except perhaps for the advent of groups such as Status Quo and Foghat who moved towards a form of high energy and repetitive boogie rock, bands became focused on heavy metal innovation, and blues-rock began to slip out of the mainstream.