MIKE POWELL
"LITTLE SCOTTY" BRADBURY
HEADHUNTERS
 - CHICAGO BLUES GUITAR STORY
Chicago grew to be the Blues center during the 1930's and 1940.'s. Thousands of Mississippians left the feilds and headed for the factories. Early electric blues wth rawness of the Delta and the amplified small combo.
The early electric blues of the 1950's featuered highly amplified guitar evolving into single string playing.
Chicago, South Side the year 1947. A middle class working man's area with
night clubs. All filled with customers and live music. Musicians like
Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Elmore Jame sare playing in the clubs with mostly acoustic instruments. The musicians are about to use electronics as a next instrument along with local South side musicians to create "Chicago Style Hard Blues"
At the intersection of Maxwell St. & Halsted Ave. in Chicago, IL,
a street filled with pawnshops with used electric guitars,
amps, mics and P.A. equipment is about to get new customers.
Purchasing and going to the gig with amps. electric guitars and larger PA systems the fusion of Delta / local musicians will make a new era in the Blues. Chicago Hard Blues was forged.
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EARLY ELECTRIC BLUES
1947 Leanord Cohen has a Blues Club in Chicago
1950 Leanard and Phil Chess assume control of Aristocrat Records and start Chess Records.
This website is dedicated to Chicago in the years 1947 to 1963
Beginnings of the Chicago Sound,
Muddy Waters, and the Fender Sound
When Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) began his stint as king of the Southside Chicago blues scene, he hadn't yet discovered the Fender Telecaster guitar. An early publicity shot shows a Gibson Les Paul solid-body guitar very similar to that which Freddie King had hanging in front of him. But it was not long before he worked nearly exclusively his slide (something else we'll investigate at a later time) up and down the neck of his beloved Telecasters.
The Telecaster was the first successful line of guitars that Leo Fender marketed (the prototype being the Broadcaster, which is usually impractical for performing because of it's tendency to excessively feedback and squeal).
It is basically a slab of wood and sports two single-coil pickups, the one toward the bridge having a very high-pitched, "slicing" quality that many players have taken full advantage of, especially Albert "The Iceman" Collins and Roy Buchanan. Single coil pickups have a more biting, immediate sound than do the "fatter" mid-ranged double-coil Humbuckers.
Muddy was a slide player extraodinaire. He would use a bottle-neck on his little finger and play electrifying runs and melodies sometimes on only one string. His licks often coincided perfectly with his vocals and he liked to quickly switch from the "treble," bridge pickup to the "mellow" one located near the end of the fretboard. The Telecaster sports only one volume and one tone control which effect both pickups equally, and many players revere it for its simplicity.
Muddy found out early that the hollow-bodied guitars, which have holes cut out off the front of the body, "f-holes," would feedback through the amplifier when he tried to play over the noisy crowds in the Southside blues clubs of Chicago. So he moved to solid-bodies, and experimented with Les Pauls and maybe other types before settling on the Telecaster. Now he could crank up the amp loud enough to be easily heard. And throughout his career he used that volume intensity when it was needed.
I've head him play very softly in a high school gymnasium when the horrible acoustics would have been a nightmare at higher volume. Many times he would crank that Fender amplifier until his slide screamed and my hair would stand on end. And it's usually a sure bet that when the "bright," treble pickup is blasted through a Fender amplifier, the sound will slice right through you. But Muddy Waters also knew how to use the mellower "neck" pickup to its full advantage. He could get a very deep delta-like moan that was straight from Mississippi. |
