Turning Up The Volume On The Electric Blues

Blues is so much a part of the fabric of American music and American culture — not only as a defined musical form, but also as a springboard for all kinds of creativity — that it seems crazy to try to encapsulate it in any way. Bear Family Records, though, has just released a 12-disc survey of electric blues called Plug It In! Turn It Up! that does a great job of illuminating one particular aspect of the blues.

That said, if you want to hear the first blues solo recorded on an electric guitar — “Floyd’s Guitar Blues,” the first track on the first disc — it’s not very good. Floyd Smith was a member of the Kansas City band Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, and cut “Floyd’s Guitar Blues” on March 16, 1939, using techniques that Hawaiian guitarists had made famous, although he seems to be playing a standard guitar. The record was a sensation, and many years later, Chuck Berry cut a version of it called “Blues for Hawaiians.”

But the first electric-blues guitar star was, no question, T-Bone Walker. Aaron Thibeaux Walker was from Dallas, and by 1950, when he made “Strollin’ With Bones,” he’d been a star for eight years. He’d influenced just about any young kid who could afford an amplifier and wanted to go out on the theater circuit, fronting a band with horns. But that wasn’t the only place the electric guitar was showing up.