T-Bone Underdone

T-BONE WALKER occupies a peculiarly ambiguous place in blues history considering he’s the man credited with inventing the single-string style of electric blues-guitar playing. Virtually every major black blues performer of the postwar period testifies to the influence of the Texan, yet Walker remains a far more hazy personality to blues fans than, say, Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf. The ‘60s rock generation bought so heavily into the Mississippi Delta/Chicago style that Walker, with his roots in the horn-oriented Texas blues tradition and a closer affinity with big-band jazz than with back-porch pickers, got lost with his sophisticated shuffles.