The first song to use the electric guitar started a revolution
For the best part of a century, the electric guitar has been a staple of popular culture. After emerging as a new instrument in the early 1930s, pioneers like Leo Fender and Les Paul pushed the six-string into the future, and its developments saw it gradually become the weapon of choice for the most influential musicians in history. Since those early days, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Nirvana have all changed the world using it. Despite technological advancements in other areas of music, the electric guitar remains as popular as ever.
The list of examples of classic songs and albums using the guitar is almost endless, but it had to start somewhere. As the history of the guitar is somewhat murky, with record keeping in the 1930s majorly distinct from the organised digital ones of today, the question of what was the first song to use the electric guitar might have been blocked by lost records and the passage of time. Luckily for fans, though, it hasn’t.
Some, albeit misguided, historians have cited Eddie Durham’s performance on The Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra’s ‘Hittin the Bottle’ as the first song in history to use an electric guitar, recorded on September 30th, 1935. However, Durham was playing a resonator guitar when he captured his performance, with the instrument first introduced by Los Angeles’ National String Instrument Corporation in 1927. Whilst resonators are louder than the traditional wooden models as they rely on metal cones, they’re not electric guitars. A magnetic pickup and an amplifier are the two essential components of an electrified six-string.
Therefore, Durham did play the first song to use an electric guitar. This monumental accolade goes to George Barnes, a contemporary of his. Per the Musician Union’s account, Barnes performed on more recordings than any other guitarist in history, appearing on 100 blues records in the 1930s alone.
Over the next two decades, Barnes continued to enjoy a celebrated session career, appearing on another 200 albums, including those by crooning icon Frank Sinatra, jazz heavyweight Louis Armstrong and country greats such as Homer & Jethro. Not done with the history books, according to Guitar World, he was the first person to play the electric guitar on a Bob Dylan recording, 1962’s unreleased ‘Mixed-Up Confusion’.
Yet, Barnes’ performance with the electric guitar on Big Bill Broonzy’s 1938 hit ‘It’s a Low-Down Dirty Shame‘ is his crowning achievement. It’s the first known song in history to feature a real electric guitar. A jazzy number, it demonstrates why Barnes was such a sought-after figure in the industry and signals the array of rip-roaring flourishes to come on the instrument over the following years. Displaying just how ahead of its time it was, the Second World War hadn’t even started yet.
What makes Barnes’ contribution so revolutionary is not just that he used an electric guitar first, but that he demonstrated its potential as more than a novelty. In ‘It’s a Low-Down Dirty Shame’, the instrument does not sit timidly in the background or mimic its acoustic predecessor. Instead, it cuts through the arrangement with clarity and intent, hinting at a future where the guitar could lead rather than accompany. In that moment, the electric guitar stopped being an experiment and became a statement.
From there, the dominoes began to fall. The ability to amplify a guitar reshaped band dynamics, recording techniques, and live performance itself. Without Barnes’ early leap, the distorted swagger of Berry, the feedback experiments of Hendrix, or the seismic shifts of punk and grunge may have arrived far later, or in entirely different forms. This single recording did not just introduce a new sound, it quietly rewired the trajectory of popular music.
Listen to ‘It’s a Low-Down Dirty Shame’ below.
