I grew up listening to and then playing the music of Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Rory Gallagher—in short, blues-oriented rock guitarists. Like many, I followed the trail to Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Little Walter, and other traditional blues artists but mainly kept treading the blues rock path. Yet, along the way I came across jazzier blues genres, initially courtesy of Duke Robillard and the original Roomful of Blues at a performance in Virginia many years ago.

A job change landed me in Orange County, California in the early 1980s at a particularly fortuitous moment as I had the good fortune to see early editions of the Mighty Flyers and James Harman with Hollywood Fats and Kid Ramos. Then Pee Wee Crayton, Joe Turner, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, and a host of other blues greats at local clubs and the Long Beach Blues Festival. It was like finding an oasis in the desert of New Wave and Punk that was au courant at the time..

Yet corporate life intervened and a few decades passed by before I joined a band and resumed my rock and roll ways. Yet those earlier times of listening to jumpin’ and swingin’ blues kept poking at me, and I resolved to “pivot” to a jazzier blues style in my listening and guitar playing. I dug out my (then) paltry collection of West Coast and jump blues CDs and dove in. Then I bought an archtop with P-90 pickups, and aided and abetted by online lessons, music, and inspiration from Tommy Harkenrider, Damian Bacci, Chris Corcoran, Junior Watson, and many others begin my even deeper dive into jump and west coast guitar playing—very much still work in progress.

In my quest to learn more about jump blues I was surprised to find that there are no books featuring jump blues and west coast guitarists—only smatterings of mentions in discographies and broader works about swing, blues, and R&B. Interestingly there are numerous books and articles on swing, Kansas City jazz, and southwest territory bands, as well as on R&B musicians and music, but few on the music that bridged the forms.

As a long-time business and technology writer, I decided to remedy the gap by creating a book about that “lost generation” of jump blues and west coast guitarists. The book will be my homage to those guitarists along with those that influenced them. In writing the book, I hope to fill a gap in published information about a host of both well known, and barely visible guitarists that I have enjoyed over the years. To be clear, there is published information in the form of books, newspaper articles, obituaries, liner notes, and even a thesis—my role as been to discover, distill, and hopefully enliven the source materials.

So why am I writing a post on Substack? Simple—I decided to use this Substack as a platform to assemble the content for the book for two reasons: 10 I didn’t want to wait for the extended period it will take to write and publish a book, and 2) I want to use the platform to encourage constructive review and comment to yield a better and hopefully more accurate final product.

My goal was and is not to offer startlingly new insight into jump blues and related forms, but simply to gather from research already done to create a “one-stop-shop” for fans of this music. As such, the contents of the blog and book are derived from secondary research across books, magazine, CD and record notes, newspapers, and any other sources that help document jump blues history.

This book could have been called “Jump Blues Sidemen,” as most of the guitarists featured in this book were sidemen to singers, pianists, horn players—even Johnny Moore, despite the name of his group largely played a support role to singer/pianists.

As sidemen, these guitarists played in the shadows of the jump blues stars and are less well documented, even obscure. That despite the fact that their playing provided a foundation and amplifying force not possible to achieve with any other instrument—from smooth, jazzy chording and solo work to slashing stabs and gritty lines derived from down home blues.

As a result of the obscurity of many of the players in this book, my work largely consisted in picking up shards of history to try to assemble a more complete picture of the players and their music. Some caveats:

1. There are lots of inconsistencies among sources— I have tried to pick the most likely from reputable sources.
2. Descriptions of tone, style etc. are subjective and subject to the vagaries of the source music. Early recordings, not always clear whether distortion was present as music was recorded or an artifact of overloaded or poorly placed microphones and/or the recording process itself (especially shellac).
3. The evolution from swing to jump blues to R&B has no definitive points of demarcation—I intend to chronicle the arc from the roots in blues, jazz, and swing music to jump and west coast blues, to the early vestiges of R&B without getting hung up on precise labeling. If you are a jump blues pedant, you might find my work frustrating. The music is fun and my hope is to retain some of that spirit.
4. This work is (very) exploratory as I started with a limited knowledge of the genre and the players. I intend to build a deep knowledge of the music, its roots, and practitioners but that will happen over time, with missteps along the way.

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After many years of recycling pentatonic blues licks, I’ve cycled back to an early lover of jump blues and west coast blues guitarists. Upon finding that there are no good books covering those guitarists, I decided to write one, using this blog to begin creating the content. Each post will feature a guitarist, the bands they played in, snippets of the history of the music and how it came to be, and anything else that adds flavor to the topic. I am using mostly secondary sources–my goal is to pull from diverse sources to create a narrative about the musicians and music that they play. I’m welcoming comments and suggestions, especially to add to my work or correct any errors. After almost 50 years of playing and listening to classic rock and blues music, I started delving into jump blues, inspired by earlier exposure to the music starting way back with Duke Robillard and the original Roomful of Blues on the east coast. Fast forward to the eighties in So Cal, and I had the good fortune to see early editions of the Mighty Flyers and James Harmon with Hollywood Fats and Kid Ramos. Then Pee Wee Crayton, Joe Turner, Clean head Vinson, and a host of other blues greats.

By now you are wondering what took me so long to get with the program, given that wealth of inspiration? I’m asking myself the same question and this blog/book my way of making up for lost time. In parallel, I’m pursuing the guitar styles (thanks to Tommy Harkenrider, Damien Bacci, ?????) while doing a deep dive on the guitarists’ lives and contributions. In my initial research I was surprised to find extremely limited and scattered information, and no books whatsoever on the remarkable musicians. As a long time business and technology writer, I decided to remedy the gap by creating a book about that “lost generation” of jump blues guitarists.

The book begins with a brief exploration of the antecedents that led to the birth of jump blues including early electric guitarists that served as—Django Reinhardt, Teddy Bunn, Eddie Durham, Lonnie Johnson, Eddie Lang, and Charlie Christian, and then move through the many guitarists that were influenced by these artists.

Thus, the blog/book is intended as my homage to jump blues guitarists along with those that influenced them. My goal was not to offer startingly new insight into jump blues and related forms, but simply to gather from research already done to create a one stop shop for fans of this music. As such, the contents of the book are derived from secondary research across books, magazine, CD and record notes, newspapers, and any other sources that help document jump blues history.

Notes: Lots of inconsistencies among sources—tried to pick the most likely from reputable sources

Descriptions of tone, style etc. are subjective and subject to the vagaries of the source music. Early recordings, not always clear whether distortion was present as music was recorded or an artifact of overloaded or poorly placed microphones and/or the recording process itself (especially shellac)