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Kenny Wayne Shepard

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[OtayBW]

Some of the old:
Big fan of the 'West Side Sound' - Magic Sam, Otis Rush.
Big fan of T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson. I continue to be amazed by the influence of T-Bone, in particular.

EDIT: Peter Green - Bluesbreaker years. How could I forget? This guy was amazing....

[terry]

Joe Bonnamassa

[bikinchris]

Robert Johnson.

Son House and Charles Patton influenced him and he influenced everyone else.

Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones exclaimed "When I first heard [him], I was hearing two guitars, and it took me a long time to realize he was actually doing it all by himself."

[malcolm]

I love guitar especially blues.

Some of my old guy faves would be, blind lemon jefferson, elmore james, robert johnson.

Old guy still around Buddy Guy is hard to beat live.

Stevie Ray Vaughn is well Stevie Ray Vaughn just awesome live very time I saw him.

Best live show hard to say but I still remember John Mayhall and the blues breakers doing a get together at a small venue in Hawaii back in the late '70s maybe 1980, anyway Mick Taylor from Rolling Stones fame was playing guitar and was absolutely amazing played a slide that would just cut through to the bone.

Kinda blues guitarist you may have never heard of Mato Nanji from the band indigenous. He's got a really good sound and I think he can really play.

[paredown]

Imma putting in a plug for the late great Freddie King--he had a brief moment in the public eye before he died when he got picked up by RSO and played with Clapton. The records (a couple with Leon Russell producing?) are OK, but he played live in a small club in Vancouver BITD--we went every night but one and tried to sit through both sets (if they didn't kick us out for not spending any money).

Big, big voice, charismatic and a happy soul--and boy could he wail.

If you want to know what Stevie Ray was listening to, listen to Hendrix and Freddie....

The other "group" was Willie Dixon and the Chicago All-stars--depending on the year the band would be a little different, but wow. I especially remember Willy, his drummer and a piano guy (about 90 years old and wearing those gambler arm bands) absolutely tearing through some classics... Willy was a showman and a great front man, he'd do these perfect spins with his upright bass and bounce it off is chest and come back right on the beat.

I could go on--Albert King, spooky and cool, Albert Collins...

That club was special, and only lasted for a few years, but I saw a bunch of folks up close and personal like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee--it made me a life-long fan of the blues.

We had an interesting drive home from NY recently, first walking back through the Village with musician friends of ours, who were pointing out all the locations that used to be small clubs that have long since closed. Now if you are a headliner, you play stadiums, if you are a working musician it is hard to find venues to play in. And the joy of live music is harder to experience.

[malcolm]

One other to check out is Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. I think he's from Louisiana as am I and in high school he used to play the across the river late night clubs a lot. Awesome performer. Another guy that performed in La a lot when I was younger was Percy Sledge, more R&B but great live.

[Auk]

The older generation were and still are the standard by which the new ones will be judged. The three Kings (BB, Freddie, and Albert) SRV, Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Johnson, etc forever.

As for the new generation there are a ton of monster players out there. Some still not commonplace in the ears and minds, but they will be.

Bonamassa
Josh Smith (monster player)
Doug Rapport (played with Johnny Winter)
Lance Lopez (think SRV on roids)
Eric Tessmer
and more than I can remember right off hand.

The blues and those that play them are alive and very well.

[1centaur]

Originally Posted by terry

Joe Bonamassa

+100. Amazing live, amazing on DVD. Very clean technique, great taste, and most shocking of all, an incredible voice. Track down the YouTube Jane Pauley piece on Joe when he was a 13-year-old phenom and then marvel that the dorky kid could grow up to have that voice. When you really listen to the clean note production it's easy to see how muddy some of the other greats are. It's a style thing, i get that, but still remarkable.

[echelon_john]

I saw Koko Taylor twice. "The Queen of the Blues," or at least Chicago blues. Phenomenal performer, moving life story. Second time I saw her was on a booze cruise in Boston Harbor in ~1990. You've never seen an audience so stunned at the end of a performance. Open mouths. Silent. She poured her heart out, and left it all on the stage. Amazing presence, soul & delivery. Once in a lifetime experience for me, and I've seen probably 600 shows in my life.

[oliver1850]

I got to see Muddy Waters twice at a small club in Champaign IL during the time that Johnny Winters was producing his records for the Blue Sky label. He was as good then (just a couple of years before his death) as ever. David McGee, writing in the Rolling Stone album guide, had this to say about the four Blue Sky albums: "Waters is fully in command again, inspired and roaring as the players fall under his spell. The live album demonstrates what everyone who saw Waters in the late 70s learned: On any given night the man could cut any other any other artist that stepped on stage. The version of Mannish Boy on Muddy Mississippi Waters Live starts slow and grinds its way to an explosive climax with Waters and Winter pushing each other to greater emotional peaks." I was hoping for Winter to show up at one of the shows but they were great without him.

I've really enjoyed the various Fat Possum artists of the last 15 years or so: Junior Kimbrough, R. L. Burnside, T Model Ford, Asie Payton, Nathaniel Mayer (thanks dimsy), and others. These guys are perhaps the last of the traditional rural Southern bluesmen. Interested parties should check out the film "You See Me Laughin', The Last of the Hill Country Bluesmen" for a glimpse at where they came from. My favorite segment is probably R. L. playing a small club in Mississippi in the early 1970s.

I've mentioned him before but Ronnie Baker Brooks is probably the most talented of the younger guys locally.

[Auk]

Oh, and now a story. . .

While I can't say it was my first concert, that honor goes to Ernest Tubbs, but for sure the first concert that made me reconsider most of the notes that I heard from that point, was BB King. BB King, at the Beef and Boards dinner club in Indianapolis. You sit down, order your big meal and then, the real dessert comes out. Every single note that he played had a reason for being hit. Some just hit you square in the head and heart and I can remember for days after just hearing specific notes. Notes that had a resonance much deeper than the note itself. I was ruined from that day forward.

[palincss]

Originally Posted by cadence90

I love the old guys, especially Jimmy Reed and Sonny Boy Williamson, Lightnin' Hopkins, Hooker, Fred McDowell, etc. Aretha, Koko Taylor, Etta James, etc.

OK, here's one, a Grand Master if ever there was one: Pinetop Perkins. At 97 he became the oldest winner of a Grammy award. If you like piano blues, I think you'll like him. And because nobody has mentioned Big Mama Thornton so far, I give you this absolutely incredible rendition of Ball and Chain.