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rhythm and blues music, and as part of the psychedelic movement, introduced the amplification, the power chords and drums that serve as the foundation needed to create this unique sound.
The Rolling Stones burst onto the popular music scene with their debut album, England's Newest Hitmakers. Right from the start you could tell that the boys weren't just your average old band. First of all, they were the first white people to play R&B and blues like this. (Their name is taken from a line in Muddy Waters tune,Mannish Boy "...Like a Ro-o-o-lin' stone")

As I, and I will use the word aged, I'm sure matured would not be accurate, my tastes diversified to include a wide variety of artists; I like country, rock, gospel, I like to hear the scream of Jonny Lang's guitar, or Little Feat's Ritchie Hayward pound his drums. However, I had really developed an ear for the slow, easy sound of this music called "The Blues". The Allman Brothers version of Stormy Monday is still one of my all-time favorites. It seems I was hooked.
I was about thirty years old when I first really listened to, and began to appreciate "the blues." I had been living in a world; unaware. However, not unhappy, I had outstanding musicians like Eric Clapton, Mark Knophler, Robin Trower, the list is limited by only time and space.
Nevertheless, when I first heard Muddy Waters shout, "I'm a man!"(Mannish Boy, 1955), I knew I had to learn more. I was "Standing at the Crossroads" (Robert Johnson).
There are some qualities common to all blues; then consequently they are plied into shape from the idiosyncrasies of individual performances. Some distinctions were present long before the creation of the modern blues.
Influenced by African roots, field hollers, ballads, church music and rhythmic dance tunes called jump-ups evolved into music for a singer who would engage in call-and-response with his guitar. He would sing a line, and the guitar would answer.Willie Dixon once said, "The blues is the roots: everything else is the fruits."
By the early 1990s, a renewed interest in American roots music spurred a resurgence of the blues and the art form that once inspired his remark.
I began to pay attention, and heard familiar lyrics, beats, and flattened chords, only brought to life in a different arena.
I liken it to the awesome experience of witnessing the birth of a child. I had no idea that 'my' rock and roll flowed from a well; so pure and deep, drawn from a mixture of the sounds and emotions that are its source.
The full-tilt blues album that Eric Clapton had been promising for years, From the Cradle, punctuates his enduring devotion to an element he had long relegated to merely a flavor in his music rather than the main ingredient. It was his tribute to the masters'.
You can feel the emotional connection Clapton has with these songs, such as "Third Degree", "Someday After a While", and the incendiary "Groanin' the Blues." Guitar aficionados swoon over his fretwork on these offerings. (Incidentally, he earned his nickname, "Slow Hand" by spending so much time putting strings on his guitar.)
So it seems the music I love so much and thought it was an emanation of my generation was not our' creation at all. It is a product of the down-home, cotton-pickin', spike-driving, riding the rail, blues. Plugged in and amplified.
"Johnny, Winter said it,
The blues got soul.
James Brown said it,
The blues got soul.
Well, now the blues had a baby,
An' they named that baby, rock-n-roll."
-Muddy Waters, 1977

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