Electric blues is blues music distinguished by the use of electric amplification for musical instruments. The guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers T-Bone Walker in the late 1930s and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters in the 1940s. Their styles developed into West Coast blues, Detroit blues, and post-World War II Chicago blues, which differed from earlier, predominantly acoustic-style blues. By the early 1950s, Little Walter was a featured soloist on blues harmonica using a small hand-held microphone fed into a guitar amplifier. Although it took a little longer, the electric bass guitar gradually replaced the stand-up bass by the early 1960s. Electric organs and especially keyboards later became widely used in electric blues.
The U.S. state of North Carolina is known particularly for its history of old-time music. Many recordings were made in the early 20th century by folk song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Influential North Carolina country musicians like the North Carolina Ramblers and Al Hopkins helped solidify the sound of country music in the late 1920s, while influential bluegrass musicians such as Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson came from North Carolina. Arthur Smith had the first nationally syndicated television program which featured country music. He composed "Guitar Boogie", the all-time best selling guitar instrumental, and "Dueling Banjos", the all-time best selling banjo composition. Country artist Eric Church from the Hickory area, has had multiple No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, including Chief in 2011. Both North and South Carolina are a hotbed for traditional country blues, especially the style known as the Piedmont blues. Elizabeth Cotten, from Chapel Hill, was active in the American folk music revival.
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 state of Maine is located in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Its musical traditions extend back thousands of years to the music of the first peoples of Maine, the Penobscot Passamaquoddy, Wabanaki and other related Indigenous cultures.
Freddie King was an American blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is considered one of the "Three Kings of the Blues Guitar". Mostly known for his soulful and powerful voice and distinctive guitar playing, King had a major influence on electric blues music and on many later blues guitarists.
Otis Rush Jr. was an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter. His distinctive guitar style featured a slow-burning sound and long bent notes. With qualities similar to the styles of other 1950s artists Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, his sound became known as West Side Chicago blues and was an influence on many musicians, including Michael Bloomfield, Peter Green and Eric Clapton.
The Marshall Tucker Band is an American rock band from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Noted for incorporating blues, country and jazz into an eclectic sound, the Marshall Tucker Band helped establish the Southern rock genre in the early 1970s. While the band had reached the height of its commercial success by the end of the decade, it has recorded and performed continuously under various line-ups for 50 years. Lead vocalist Doug Gray remains the only original member still active with the band.
John Warren Geils Jr., known professionally as J. Geils or Jay Geils, was an American guitarist. He was known as the leader of the J. Geils Band.
Jimmie Lawrence Vaughan Jr. is an American blues rock guitarist and singer based in Austin, Texas. He is the older brother of the late Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Slaid Cleaves is an American singer-songwriter born in Washington, D.C., and raised in South Berwick, Maine and Round Pond, Maine, United States. An alumnus of Tufts University, where he majored in English and philosophy, Cleaves lives in Austin, Texas.
Rod Picott is a singer-songwriter whose music incorporates elements of Americana, alternative country, and folk. He was born in New Hampshire, but relocated to Nashville, Tennessee in 1994. After several years of playing local clubs and supporting such acts as Alison Krauss, he released his first album in 2001. As of 2023, he has released 15 albums.
Michael Stephen Levine is the bassist and keyboardist for the Canadian hard rock band Triumph.
Sarah White is a singer-songwriter based in Richmond, Virginia, whose music can be roughly characterized as folk or alt-country.
Canadian blues is the blues and blues-related music performed by blues bands and performers in Canada. Canadian blues artists include singers, players of the main blues instruments: guitar, harmonica, keyboards, bass and drums, songwriters and music producers. In many cases, blues artists take on multiple roles. For example, the Canadian blues artist Steve Marriner is a singer, harmonica player, guitarist, songwriter and record producer.
Alice Stuart was an American blues and folk singer-songwriter and guitarist. She toured the UK with Van Morrison and throughout the United States with Mississippi John Hurt.
Adam Carroll is an Americana singer-songwriter who was born in Tyler, Texas, and has spent most of his career in the Austin, Texas area. Carroll has nine solo albums to his credit, all indie releases, beginning with 2000's South of Town. His songwriting, which focuses on life in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, is influenced by the work of Texas greats such as Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. He was honored in 2016 with the release Highway Prayer: A Tribute to Adam Carroll, which features recordings of his songs by some of Austin's leading Americana music artists, including Slaid Cleaves, James McMurtry, Terri Hendrix and Tim Easton.
