The Blues Brothers are an American blues and soul revivalist band founded in 1978 by comedians Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as part of a musical sketch on Saturday Night Live. Belushi and Aykroyd were lead vocalist 'Joliet' Jake Blues and harmonica player and vocalist Elwood Blues, respectively, donning black suits with matching trilby hats and sunglasses. The band was composed of well-known musicians and debuted as the musical guest in a 1978 episode of Saturday Night Live, opening the show performing "Hey Bartender" and "Soul Man".
Instrumental rock is rock music that emphasizes instrumental performance and features very little or no singing. Examples of instrumental music in rock can be found in practically every subgenre of the style. Instrumental rock was most popular from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, with artists such as Bill Doggett Combo, The Fireballs, The Shadows, The Ventures, Johnny and the Hurricanes and The Spotnicks. Surf music had many instrumental songs. Many instrumental hits had roots from the R&B genre. The Allman Brothers Band feature several instrumentals. Jeff Beck also recorded two instrumental albums in the 1970s. Progressive rock and art rock performers of the late 1960s and early 1970s did many virtuosic instrumental performances.
John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers are an English blues rock band led by multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter John Mayall. The band has been influential as an incubator for British rock and blues musicians. Many of the best known bands to come out of Britain in the 1960s and 1970s had members that came through the Bluesbreakers at one time, forming the foundation of British blues music that is still played heavily on classic rock radio. Among those with a tenure in the Bluesbreakers are Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce, Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie, Mick Taylor, Aynsley Dunbar, Jon Hiseman, Dick Heckstall-Smith and Tony Reeves, and numerous others.
The Moody Blues were an English rock band formed in Birmingham in May 1964. The band initially consisted of drummer Graeme Edge, guitarist and vocalist Denny Laine, keyboardist and vocalist Mike Pinder, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ray Thomas, and bassist and vocalist Clint Warwick; Edge was the group's sole continuous member throughout their entire history. Originally part of the British beat and R&B scene of the early–mid 1960s, the band came to prominence with the UK No. 1 and US Top 10 single "Go Now" in late 1964/early 1965. Laine and Warwick left the band by the end of 1966, being replaced by guitarist and vocalist Justin Hayward and bassist and vocalist John Lodge. They embraced the psychedelic rock movement of the late 1960s, with their second album, 1967's Days of Future Passed, being a fusion of rock with classical music that established the band as pioneers in the development of art rock and progressive rock. It has been described as a "landmark" and "one of the first successful concept albums".
Carlos Humberto Santana Barragán is an American guitarist who rose to fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band Santana, which pioneered a fusion of rock and roll and Latin American jazz. Its sound featured his melodic, blues-based lines set against Latin American and African rhythms played on percussion instruments not generally heard in rock, such as timbales and congas. He experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. In 2015, Rolling Stone magazine listed him at No. 20 on their list of the 100 greatest guitarists. He has won 10 Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards, and was inducted along with his namesake band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
John Mayall is an English blues and rock singer and musician whose career spans over sixty years. In the 1960s, he formed John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, a band that has counted among its members some of the most famous blues and blues rock musicians.
Canned Heat is an American blues and rock band that was formed in Los Angeles in 1965. The group has been noted for its efforts to promote interest in blues music and its original artists. It was launched by two blues enthusiasts Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, who took the name from Tommy Johnson's 1928 "Canned Heat Blues", a song about an alcoholic who had desperately turned to drinking Sterno, generically called "canned heat". After appearances at the Monterey and Woodstock festivals at the end of the 1960s, the band acquired worldwide fame with a lineup of Hite (vocals), Wilson, Henry Vestine and later Harvey Mandel, Larry Taylor (bass), and Adolfo de la Parra (drums).
Robert William Gary Moore was a Northern Irish musician. Over the course of his career he played in various groups and performed a range of music including blues, blues rock, hard rock, heavy metal, and jazz fusion.
Michael Bernard Bloomfield was an American guitarist and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, as he rarely sang before 1969. Respected for his guitar playing, Bloomfield knew and played with many of Chicago's blues musicians before achieving his own fame and was instrumental in popularizing blues music in the mid-1960s. In 1965, he played on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, including the single "Like a Rolling Stone", and performed with Dylan at that year's Newport Folk Festival.
Rick Derringer is an American guitarist, vocalist, producer and songwriter. He came to prominence in the 1960s as founding member of his band, the McCoys. Their debut single, "Hang on Sloopy", was a number-one hit in 1965 and became a classic of the garage rock era. The McCoys then had seven songs that charted in the top 100, including versions of "Fever" and "Come on Let’s Go".
Blues rock is a fusion genre and form of rock music that relies on the chords/scales and instrumental improvisation of blues. It is mostly an electric ensemble-style music with instrumentation similar to electric blues and rock. From its beginnings in the early to mid-1960s, blues rock has gone through several stylistic shifts and along the way it inspired and influenced hard rock, Southern rock, and early heavy metal.
The Steve Miller Band is an American rock band formed in 1966 in San Francisco, California. The band is led by Steve Miller on guitar and lead vocals. The group had a string of mid- to late-1970s hit singles that are staples of classic rock, as well as several earlier psychedelic rock albums. Miller left his first band to move to San Francisco and form the Steve Miller Blues Band. Shortly after Harvey Kornspan negotiated the band's contract with Capitol Records in 1967, the band shortened its name to the Steve Miller Band. In February 1968, the band recorded its debut album, Children of the Future. It went on to produce the albums Sailor, Brave New World, Your Saving Grace, Number 5, Rock Love, Fly Like an Eagle, Book of Dreams, among others. The band's Greatest Hits 1974–78, released in 1978, sold over 13 million copies. In 2016, Steve Miller was inducted as a solo artist in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Robert William Cray is an American blues guitarist and singer. He has led his own band and won five Grammy Awards.
Mashina Vremeni is a Russian rock band founded in 1969. Mashina Vremeni was a pioneer of Soviet rock music and remains one of the oldest still-active rock bands in Russia. The band's music incorporates elements of classic rock, blues, and bard's song. Mashina Vremeni's best known members are Andrei Makarevich, Alexander Kutikov, and Evgeny Margulis (guitarist/songwriter).
Joseph Leonard Bonamassa is an American blues rock guitarist, singer and songwriter. He started his career at age twelve, when he opened for B.B. King. Since 2000, Bonamassa has released fifteen solo albums through his independent record label J&R Adventures, of which eleven have reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues chart.
Blues Creation is a Japanese rock band formed in Tokyo in 1969. Led by guitarist/singer Kazuo Takeda, they were known as Blues Creation from 1969 to 1972 and after a three-year hiatus returned as simply Creation in 1975.
Bernard John Marsden was an English rock and blues guitarist. He is primarily known for his work with Whitesnake, having written or co-written with David Coverdale many of the group's hit songs, such as "Fool for Your Loving", "Walking in the Shadow of the Blues", "She's A Woman", "Lovehunter", "Trouble", "Child of Babylon", "Rough and Ready", and the multi-million selling chart-topper "Here I Go Again".
Kenny Wayne Shepherd is an American guitarist. He has released several studio albums and experienced significant commercial success as a blues rock artist.
Howlin Rain is an American rock band based in Oakland, California, formed in 2004 by guitarist/singer Ethan Miller. Their most recent album The Dharma Wheel was released in 2021. Their sound has been described as "classically soulful" and "Unapologetically influenced by the strong but easygoing grooves of West Coast 1970s rock".
The Tedeschi Trucks Band is an American blues and blues rock group based in Jacksonville, Florida. Formed in 2010, the band is led by married couple Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. Their debut album, Revelator (2011), won the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Blues Album. The band has released five studio and three live albums.
