Them Blues.....
 

So expanding further in my musical tastes I decided to go to the roots of rock n' roll. I already delved into the classical, (Beethoven, Bach, etc), and now I am going for blues.

What comes to mind are artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan, ZZ-Top, Eric Clapton but I would like to delve into more pure blues.

So, all you fans out there of GOOD blues artists give me more names:

I am already also aware of B.B King, but I know there are others.

Speaking of Eric Clapton:

I already enjoy Layla - Unplugged, and Eric Clapton Featuring Buddy Guy - Sweet Home Chicago VERY good! :D

Besides just artists, titles of their respective albums/songs would be appreciated as well. :D

Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Lightnin' Hopkins come immediately to mind as "must have's". No particular album - just a good anthology for each.

Since you're talking "White Blues", two relatively new releases (within the last two years) include:

And since you're talking B.B. King, two "must have's" include:

I've also recently started to slowly delve into classic blues music. I still don't know much about it, but there's a lot of out-of-copyright stuff from the 30's and 40's out there, often available in discount collections.

I recently picked up a couple of CDs like that, and these are the artists featured on them:

B.B. King
Big Bill Broonzy
Cecil Gant
Charles Brown
Joe Turner
John Lee Hooker
Kokomo Arnold
Leroy Carr
Lightnin' Hopkins
Lowell Fulson
Memphis Minnie
Muddy Waters
Percy Mayfield
Robert Johnson
Roy Hawkins
Roy Milton
Sleepy John Estes
T-Bone Walker

I learned quite a few interesting things about the artists and blues history simply by researching the songs on these discs (I wanted to find the dates of each song to put in the date tags when I ripped them to ogg).

Robert Johnson was an artist who died young and only made a few recordings, but was very influential nevertheless. Sweet Home Chicago is his, though it was itself a reworking of Kokomo Arnold's Old Original Kokomo Blues, which was itself descended from a version done by Scrapper Blackwell. The reworking of older stuff seems to be a big part of the blues tradition.

Memphis Minnie was one of the few female blues singers of that era.

Big Joe Turner was the first performer to record Shake, Rattle & Roll. Apparently it's quite educational to compare his bluesy version with Bill Haley's later Rock 'n Roll rendition.

The track on my collection by Cecil Gant, I Wonder, must've been really popular. It reached number one on the Juke Box Race records chart in 1944, only to be displaced in 1945 by Roosevelt Sykes cover version of the same song. Louis Armstrong and Warren Evans also recorded versions of this song that charted in the same year (at 3 and 6).

John Lee Hooker can be seen in the Blues Brothers movie. I love his Boom Boom. Check him out. Speaking of which, the various Blues Brothers albums also provide a good introduction to classical R&B.

I'm certainly going to be on the lookout for more albums of this type. :)

And as always, Wikipedia will give you a good run-down on the topic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues

Great so far!
 

"White Blues" is fine nothing wrong with it, but thats why I also alluded to 'pure blues.' Nothing wrong with Eric Clapton, and others singing blues, and I do like Led Zeppelin's rendition of When The Levee Breaks, I also decided to check out the original.

But I am looking for other blues artists, besides B.B King and Buddy Guy.

Also, I already know of Tom Petty and of course Bob Dylan, excellent BTW. I will most definitely check out: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Lightmin' Hopkins as you listed.

Keep em coming though! :D

Although I consider my most FAVORITE genre Metal and secondary Rock, this is pretty much what prompted me to check out their roots, classical and blues. Perhaps most don't associate Metal with blues as much, let alone classical, but there is a definite correlation between GOOD metal riffs with classical, as well as the obvious 'blue's scale' found in rock music, blue's scale also being known as the Tritone/diminished fifth, or more famously 'devil's note.'

BTW metal isn't always just the two power chords and such, and while I do enjoy it, as I stated earlier I do wish to expand on my musical tastes a bit. :)

Excellent! +10!

I'm mostly into classic 60's rock and progressive stuff from the 70's and 80's myself, but I like to dabble in a variety of genres. Like you I'm just starting to look further back into the roots of Rock, particularly early blues and jazz, and the dawn of Rock 'n Roll in the 50's. There's an amazingly deep history behind our modern music that most average listeners just aren't aware of.

As for classical, that was my first love, particularly the romantic composers, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms. Beethoven's 7th symphony still entrances me every time I listen to it.

Hehe; well I am now in my late 20s; yea I do like Metallica/Megadeth, 1990s Seattle music such as Nirvana, and must have Soundgarden (which I heard they are back together). Anyways, I like progressive Rock, and Progressive Metal as well. I already discovered Rush, and as for Progressive Metal that would be considered 'contemporary', Devin Townsend has some interesting stuff, he is modern.

Still I have been listening to classic rock such as Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc already for a few years now, and I always end up listening to them more, than I do today's music, which of course begs the question, what does it say about today's 'so-called' music, when I find myself listening to music of what essentially is my parent's generation rather than the 'stuff' thats out today?

I'm only in my late twenties, but like I said with a few exceptions of more contemporary stuffs like Nirvana/Soungarden, Metallica, etc, I much prefer classic stuff, than whats out today.

Although, technically now even bands like Soundgarden and Metallica would soon fall under 'classic rock/metal' lol. :p

Charley Patton
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Son House
Mississippi John Hurt
Luke Jordan
Blind Willie McTell
Blind Blake
Memphis Minnie
Johnny Hoodoo http://www.myspace.com/johnnyhoodoo
Barbecue Bob
Blindboy Fuller
Bukka White
Furry Lewis
Henry Thomas
Kansas Joe Mcoy
Little Hat Jones
Oscar Woods
Skip James

For old stuff like this checkout the yazoo and document labels.

Sweet! A very sizable list to go through now. :D