Who was the first-ever blues guitarist?
Some questions linger over musically inclined conversations with an impending doom. Completely impossible to answer and yet utterly enticing enough to want to offer at least some thoughts to, it is difficult to ignore the allure of throwing your hat in the ring and deciding who coined the term “rock music” or who was the first artist to hit a bass drum triplet. One such query has left us truly scratching our heads.
Guitar music was, for a long time, far removed from being the main player. Today, we may think that any guitarist will stand alongside the lead singer as perhaps the most spotlight-bathed member of any band. However, for a long time, the guitar was merely a shadowy addition to any group.
For the most part, if you were a guitarist before the turn of the 20th century, you were either part of an orchestra, playing classical guitar music or were working as a walking, talking troubadour. During the 17th century and beyond, the guitar remained firmly in this space, rarely offering much more than an accompaniment, either to a larger ensemble as part of a classical set-up or the poetry at the heart of most folk songs.
At the turn of the century, the instrument would finally begin to take centre stage. Blues music offered so much to so many during the late 1800s and early 1900s. It connected with a country struggling to make ends meet and swathes of the population who needed solace to make it through their day. The blues would become the heartbeat of music at this time.
But perhaps the most interesting thing about the blues was that, although lyrics, often tinged with melancholy, could become secondary to the music being played, blues guitarists were the first group to truly let their instruments emote. Blues songs were a double-edged attack, pathos-drenched lyrics, and a guitar that whimpered and wailed like an injured puppy.
So, who was the first blues guitarist?
It should be noted that picking out exactly who was the first guitarist to pick up the instrument and begin to enact the painful joy noted above is near-impossible. Blues were not born in the recording studio but in the juke joints, moonshine-dripping porches and back-alley bars of America’s south. So, deciding exactly who might have been the first to perform the 12-bar brilliance is difficult; however, we can take a good guess at who might have been the first to be recorded.
One of the earliest blues recordings comes from Mamie Smith and her song ‘Crazy Blues’, recorded in 1920, but there is no guitarist to be found. Blind Lemon Jefferson certainly has a claim with his 1926 song ‘Long Lonesome Blues’, the track is, however, bristling with so much country-style fingerpicking that it feels slightly wrong to claim it as traditional blues guitar.
With that in mind, the artist we are giving the coveted accolade to is Charley Patton and his tune ‘Pony Blues’. Jack White called the guitarist “basically the great-grandfather of all American and Western music,” and with this recording below, it feels difficult not to see how this track didn’t affect everything we know about music today. Imbued with soulful salutations and incandescent individuality, Patton’s position as the first-ever blues guitarist worth listening to will stand the test of time.
