YEAR
1987
INDUCTED BY
Seymour Stein
CATEGORY
Early Influences
T-Bone Walker was the pioneer of the blues, shaping the genre with his trailblazing use of early electric guitars.
T-Bone Walker was the first to make a guitar wail, cry out and buckle under the weight of his emotion. He has influenced the likes of B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton.
T-Bone Walker
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Michael Hill
It was T-Bone Walker, B.B. King once said, who “really started me to want to play the blues. I can still hear T-Bone in my mind today from that first record I heard, ‘Stormy Monday.’ He was the first electric guitar player I heard on record. He made me so that I knew I just had to go out and get an I electric guitar.”
Walker was the godfather of the modern electric blues guitar. He transformed the prewar styles of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson into sophisticated, swinging electric music.
