Elmore James

Seldom has a single musician had a more lasting effect than Elmore James, the King of the Slide Guitar. That shangety-shangety bottleneck riff defined the sound after he debuted it on his seminal "Dust My Broom," inspiring other Chicago slide aces and eventually spreading all around the globe as blues-rockers fed it through mammoth amps. The mind-melting impact of James's anguished vocals was every bit as intense as his crashing fretwork.

First cut in August 1951, "Dust My Broom" defined his signature style: a swooping, full-octave opening figure on slide guitar. James left behind a raft of classic blues songs that influenced a legion of Chicago slide players and were a foundational influence for the '60s blues-rock explosion — going beyond that one riff to practically invent blues rock by virtue of energizing primal riffs with a raw, driving intensity. His songs include "Shake Your Moneymaker," "Talk To Me Baby," "It Hurts Me Too," and "The Sky Is Crying," and have been covered by the Allman Brothers Band, Canned Heat, Fleetwood Mac, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

"You can hear his signature riff at least once a night from every slide guitarist working," music historian Tony Glover has written, "but no one has ever quite matched that vocal intensity, which transformed the lonesome moan of the Delta into a Chicago scream."