T-Bone Walker: The Complete Imperial Recordings, 1950-1954 (Imperial/EMI)

CONTEMPORARY BLUES guitar starts here. True enough, everything has its origins in something else: Aaron Thibaux "T-Bone" Walker (1910 – 1975) had hung out in Oklahoma alongside Charlie Christian, the short-lived visionary who "invented" the electric guitar as a modern musical instrument; and the single-string licks and lines T-Bone Walker played were themselves based on the pioneering work of 1920s acoustic bluesmen like Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, whom T-Bone had known as a kid in Texas. Nevertheless, T-Bone Walker is the guy who defined the turf, and everybody else (from B.B. King, Lowell Fulson, Gatemouth Brown and Chuck Berry to Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughan) has simply refined or extended it. Listen to any modern blues lead guitar, and you'll hear T-Bone Walker's original licks coming back at you.