Various - Electric Blues - Plug It In! Turn It Up! Vol.4 Electric Blues 1970 - 2005 (3-CD)

Electric Blues - Plug It In! Turn It Up!

Bear Family's "Plug It In! Turn It Up! Electric Blues wins the Historical Album category at the 2013 Blues Music Awards

Texas native T-Bone Walker was the primary catalyst for the electric blues guitar movement as we now know it. Beginning with his pioneering Mean Old World in 1942 (this set's second track), he wrote much of the vocabulary of postwar electric blues guitar. Sensing which way the wind was blowing, hallowed blues veterans Big Bill, Minnie, Tampa, and plenty more of the relative old-timers gamely made the switch; a new generation of younger electric blues guitarists sprang up in T-Bone's mighty wake in Texas, all over the South, in the Windy City, and on the West Coast. Most of those seminal guitar greats can be found on this collection.

Amplified harmonica was a later innovation. The humble mouth organ didn't even really emerge as a credible solo instrument until John Lee 'Sonny Boy' Williamson surfaced with his Bluebird waxing of Good Morning, School Girl (Sonny Boy didn't have time to make the leap to amplifying his instrument prior to his 1948 murder, but he welcomed electric guitar into his band a few years before he was killed). Only in the late '40s and early '50s did a dazzling young coterie of harp wizards emerge to take it to the next level by pumping their thrilling solos through a mic and amp, led by unparalleled Chicagoan Little Walter. His forward-thinking peers included Snooky Pryor, Big Walter Horton, George 'Harmonica' Smith, Papa Lightfoot, and Junior Wells. 

Before this series of three-CD sets concludes, the listener will be guided through all the permutations of electric blues: swinging jump numbers, lowdown solo grinders, '50s rock 'n' rollers, the hard-charging British and American blues-rock of the '60s and beyond, soul-blues of the '70s, and right on up to the contemporary blues of today, where the electric guitar continues to reign as almighty king.

There's no way to include every deserving landmark of the genre on this series—that would require a virtual mountain of discs and an accompanying avalanche of words—but by the time you listen to the dozen jam-packed CDs that comprise this series, you'll have a pretty fair idea of how electric blues progressed, and who the important players were (not to mention a raft of unsung heroes).

Without the advent of amplification, blues as we know it in the 21^st Century would never have existed. Here are the legends who invented electric blues.

Bear Family's "Plug It In! Turn It Up! Electric Blues 1939-2005" beat out four other nominees to win the Historical Album category at the 2013 Blues Music Awards, held May 9, 2013 at the Cook Convention Center in Memphis.

Bill Dahl, reissue producer of the comprehensive 12-CD series for Bear Family, was in attendance to accept the coveted award at the gala ceremonies, attended by 1300 blues artists, musicians, various movers and shakers, and devoted fans of the genre.