 | | While most bands undergo a number of changes over the course of their careers, few groups experienced such radical stylistic changes as Fleetwood Mac. |
 | | By the time Eric Clapton launched his solo career with the release of his self-titled debut album in mid-1970, he was long established as one of the world's major rock stars due to his group affiliations -- the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, and Blind Faith -- which had demonstrated his claim to being the best rock guitarist of his generation. |
 | | Gregg Allman's most visible contribution to rock music is as lead singer, organist, and songwriter with the Allman Brothers Band, founded by his brother Duane (d. |
 | | Duane Allman went from musical unknown to one of rock's most revered guitar virtuosos, only to die a legend, all in about 24 months. |
 | | With his astonishingly accomplished guitar playing, Stevie Ray Vaughan ignited the blues revival of the '80s. |
 | | While he was as innovative as Jimmy Page, as tasteful as Eric Clapton, and nearly as visionary as Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck never achieved the same commercial success as any of those contemporaries, primarily because of the haphazard way he approached his career. |
 | | When Johnny Winter emerged on the national scene in 1969, the hope, particularly in the record business, was that he would become a superstar on the scale of Jimi Hendrix, another blues-based rock guitarist and singer who preceded him by a few years. |
 | | The story of the Allman Brothers Band is one of triumph, tragedy, redemption, dissolution, and a new redemption. |
 | | Peter Green is regarded by some fans as the greatest white blues guitarist ever, Eric Clapton notwithstanding. |
 | | What made Jeff Healey different from other blues-rockers was also what kept some listeners from accepting him as anything other than a novelty -- the fact that the blind guitarist played his Fender Stratocaster on his lap, not standing up. |
 | | Derek & the Dominos was a group formed by guitarist/singer Eric Clapton (born Eric Patrick Clapp, March 30, 1945, Ripley, Surrey, England) with other former members of Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, in the spring of 1970. |
 | | Though they had all the trappings of a Southern-fried blues band, Little Feat were hardly conventional. |
 | | Long a critic's darling, singer/guitarist Bonnie Raitt did not begin to win the comparable commercial success due her until the release of the aptly titled 1989 blockbuster Nick of Time; her tenth album, it rocketed her into the mainstream consciousness nearly two decades after she first committed her unique blend of blues, rock, and R&B to vinyl. |
 | | As a solo artist, Steve Winwood is primarily associated with the highly polished blue-eyed soul-pop that made him a star in the '80s. |
 | | As the elder statesman of British blues, it is John Mayall's lot to be more renowned as a bandleader and mentor than as a performer in his own right. |
 | | Ten Years After was a British blues-rock quartet consisting of Alvin Lee (born December 19, 1944, died March 6, 2013), guitar and vocals; Chick Churchill (born January 2, 1949), keyboards; Leo Lyons (born November 30, 1944) bass; and Ric Lee (born October 20, 1945), drums. |
 | | Paul Butterfield was the first white harmonica player to develop a style original and powerful enough to place him in the pantheon of true blues greats. |
 | | For a career that was cut short by illness and a premature death, guitarist, singer, and songwriter Rory Gallagher sure accomplished a lot in the blues music world. |
 | | With his laid-back rootsy style, J.J. Cale is best known for writing "After Midnight" and "Cocaine," songs that Eric Clapton later made into hits. |
 | | By the time the Rolling Stones began calling themselves the World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the late '60s, they had already staked out an impressive claim on the title. |
 | | With their fusion of blues, rock & roll, and R&B, the Fabulous Thunderbirds helped popularize roadhouse Texas blues with a mass audience in the '80s and, in the process, they helped kick-start a blues revival during the mid-'80s. |
 | | This sturdy American blues-rock trio from Texas consists of Billy Gibbons (guitar), Dusty Hill (bass), and Frank Beard (drums). |
 | | Although Cream was only together for a little more than two years, their influence was immense, both during their late-'60s peak and in the years following their breakup. |
 | | Kenny Wayne Shepherd and his group exploded on the scene in the mid-'90s and garnered huge amounts of radio airplay on commercial radio, which historically has not been a solid home for blues and blues-rock music, with the exception of Stevie Ray Vaughan in the mid-'80s. |
 | | Steve Miller's career has encompassed two distinct stages: one of the top San Francisco blues-rockers during the late '60s and early '70s, and one of the top-selling pop/rock acts of the mid- to late '70s and early '80s with hits like "The Joker," "Fly Like an Eagle," "Rock'n Me," and "Abracadabra. |
 | | Santana is the primary exponent of Latin-tinged rock, particularly due to its combination of Latin percussion (congas, timbales, etc. |
 | | Modern blues in the '90s had a weird phenomenon of teenage blues guitarists rocketing to popularity with their first album. |
 | | Roy Buchanan has long been considered one of the finest, yet criminally overlooked guitarists of the blues rock genre whose lyrical leads and use of harmonics would later influence such guitar greats as Jeff Beck, his one-time student Robbie Robertson, and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons. |
 | | The Yardbirds are mostly known to the casual rock fan as the starting point for three of the greatest British rock guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. |
 | | Part of the late-'60s blues-rock movement, Britain's Savoy Brown never achieved as much success in their homeland as they did in America, where they promoted their albums with nonstop touring. |
 | | The J. Geils Band was one of the most popular touring rock & roll bands in America during the '70s. Where their contemporaries were influenced by the heavy boogie of British blues-rock and the ear-splitting sonic adventures of psychedelia, the J. |
 | | Throughout his long and winding solo career, guitarist Robin Trower has had to endure countless comparisons to Jimi Hendrix, due to his uncanny ability to channel Hendrix's bluesy/psychedelic, Fender Strat-fueled playing style. |
 | | A hard-luck blues band of the '60s, Canned Heat was founded by blues historians and record collectors Alan Wilson and Bob Hite. |
 | | The greatest white female rock singer of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was also a great blues singer, making her material her own with her wailing, raspy, supercharged emotional delivery. |
 | | Lynyrd Skynyrd was the definitive Southern rock band, fusing the overdriven power of blues-rock with a rebellious Southern image and a hard rock swagger. |
 | | Blind Faith was either one of the great successes of the late '60s, a culmination of the decade's efforts by three legendary musicians -- or it was a disaster of monumental proportions, and a symbol of everything that had gone wrong with the business of rock at the close of the decade. |
 | | From his early hits with the James Gang through to his tenure with the Eagles -- as well as a successful solo career -- Joe Walsh remained one of the most colorful characters in rock & roll, lending his distinctively reedy vocals, off-the-wall lyrics, and expansive guitar leads to a series of AOR staples including "Funk #49," "Rocky Mountain Way," and "Life's Been Good. |
 | | As the lead singer for the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger is one of the most popular and influential frontmen in the history of rock & roll. |
 | | Guitar mastermind Joe Bonamassa, a young player with the childhood dream of playing music similar to legends like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix, was 22 when he inked a deal with Epic. |
 | | As a founding member of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Jimmie Vaughan was one of the leading Austin, Texas guitarists of the late '70s and '80s, responsible for opening the national market up for gritty roadhouse blues and R&B. |
 | | Rock's longest, strangest trip, the Grateful Dead were the psychedelic era's most beloved musical ambassadors as well as its most enduring survivors, spreading their message of peace, love, and mind-expansion across the globe throughout the better part of three decades. |
 | | Buddy Guy is one of the most celebrated blues guitarists of his generation (and arguably the most celebrated), possessing a sound and style that embodied the traditions of classic Chicago Blues while also embracing the fire and flash of rock & roll. |
 | | New Jersey-born blues-rocker Walter Trout spent decades as an ace sideman, playing guitar behind the likes of John Lee Hooker, Big Mama Thornton, and Joe Tex. |
 | | Tin-eared critics have frequently damned him as a yuppie blues wannabe whose slickly soulful offerings bear scant resemblance to the real down-home item. |
 | | Sibling blues guitarists Jimmie Vaughan (born in 1951) and Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954-1990) were born and raised in Dallas, TX. |
 | | In his brief four-year reign as a superstar, Jimi Hendrix expanded the vocabulary of the electric rock guitar more than anyone before or since. |
 | | A blues-rock guitarist who draws his inspiration from Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor, and Chuck Berry, George Thorogood never earned much respect from blues purists, but he became a popular favorite in the early '80s through repeated exposure on FM radio and the arena rock circuit. |
 | | After first finding acclaim as a member of the Steve Miller Band, singer/songwriter Boz Scaggs went on to enjoy considerable solo success in the 1970s. |
 | | Jefferson Starship was among the most successful arena rock bands of the 1970s and early '80s, an even greater commercial entity than its predecessor, Jefferson Airplane, the band out of which it evolved. |
 | | In a career that now spans four decades, vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter Paul Rodgers and his various groups have sold in excess of 125 million records around the world. |
