News & Updates — guitar

The wildly popular and immediately recognizable blues stylist Jimmy Reed was a major influence on rock music. His style was so simple and basic that it didn't matter what the critics said of his music, it was heard far & wide as he cranked out pop hit after pop hit in his formula. His laid-back, almost slurry style was a huge inspiration to members of the '60s rock generation (Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, Yardbirds, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix) as well as blues artists like Slim Harpo. Some consider him a precursor to punk rock. Born on a plantation...

Kentucky singer and banjo/guitar player Roscoe Holcomb recorded some deeply felt, almost disturbing, "moaning" folk music. Bluegrass, old-timey, blues and spiritual songs and a variety of traditional Appalachian folk songs passed down through the generations. Some of his vocalizing comes straight from the church, and some of the songs seem to be improvised. He lived a grueling life of pain, a farmer and coal miner, a tough motherfucker who broke his back several times, they say. He could also handle the fiddle and harmonica. He was recorded in 1958 and subsequently toured to some success during the folk revival, but pain and...

One of the three great Kings of blues guitar, along with BB and Albert, Freddie King was a commanding singer and an awesome electric guitarist with fast fingers. He was a huge influence on Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan and other pale-faced blues-rockers. Originally from Dallas, he started playing guitar at six. He moved to Chicago as a teenager and started absorbing all the killer blues happening in the city. He started playing in bands in the early '50s and worked with Willie Dixon, Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, Robert Lockwood Jr and others. When King got the call to cut...

Sonny Sharrock came around 'bout the same time as Jimi Hendrix and brought a fast & heavy string-shaking style into free jazz, with massive chords and rock energy. His sound & style contained elements of hard rock, doo-wop, funk, bop and soul, and he claims to model his playing after jazz saxophonists and John Coltrane in particular. (He claimed that asthma prevented him from playing a horn and that he thought himself "a horn player with a really fucked up axe".) Warren Sharrock hailed from Westchester County NY and sang doo-wop as a teenager. He got into jazz and made...

Happy birthday to the Gray Panther Party's inspired folkie, Malvina Reynolds. She was a Socialist/activist singer-songwriter who, along with her husband, was involved in left-wing causes and labor organizing for decades. She was also a writer, guitarist, social worker, feminist, civil & gay rights activist and mother. Born into a Jewish family in San Francisco, Malvina Milder was denied a high school diploma by her school due to her parents opposition to WW1. In the '20s she played violin in a dance band before marrying labor activist Bud Reynolds in '34 and giving birth to future musician Nancy Schimmel. Being...