Slide Blues
Located in 1 route
Slide Blues is blues built around a bottleneck, metal tube, knife, or other slide gliding over the strings to create vocal-like bends, glissandi, and sustained moans. It usually uses open tunings, strong vibrato, call-and-response with the singer, and a tone that can sound crying, laughing, preaching, or threatening depending on the hand behind the glass.
History
Slide Blues emerged from early Southern guitar traditions, Hawaiian guitar influence, African American work-song and spiritual vocalism, and practical homemade technique. Son House, Charley Patton, Blind Willie Johnson, Tampa Red, Bukka White, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Earl Hooker, and Bonnie Raitt carried slide into country blues, sacred blues, urban blues, Chicago electric bands, blues rock, and modern roots music. The style became one of the guitar’s most recognizable blues dialects, influencing rock, country, sacred steel, and global blues traditions.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Jas Obrecht, Early Blues: The First Stars of Blues Guitar
- Samuel Charters, The Country Blues
- AllMusic
- The Blues Foundation