Here are 16 Delta blues artists every music fan should know
- Ani
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
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The Delta stretches across northwestern Mississippi like a big fallen leaf, tucked between two rivers. It spans 220 miles north to south and, at its widest, 87 miles east to west.
How can so many great musical artists come from so small a place? As historian Ted Gioia observed, the Delta’s influence on American music “is so pervasive today that it is almost impossible to take full measure of its impact.”
Here are 16 great Delta blues artists. All are Black. Fifteen are men.
Many of America’s greatest blues artists are women, including Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Sister Rosetta Tharpe – but they weren’t from the Delta. The royal lineage that stretches from Charley Patton through Robert Johnson to B.B. King is largely a procession of men with guitars.
W.C. Handy: Bandleader William Christopher Handy claimed to have discovered the blues around 1903 while waiting for a train in the Delta town of Tutwiler, where a local serenaded him with a song about “goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog.” Handy moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and penned arguably the first blues hit, “Memphis Blues,” published in 1912.
Charley Patton: The first great Delta bluesman learned music on the Dockery Plantation, a legendary blues incubator. In a series of recordings between 1929 and 1934, Patton wrote the vocabulary of Delta blues, introducing songs and lyrical themes that would be passed down for generations, including the Great Flood epic “High Water Everywhere.”
Son House: Eddie James House Jr. was born in 1902 near the Delta blues mecca of Clarksdale. House shot a man dead in 1928 and did time at Parchman Farm, a holding tank for several blues icons. Under Patton’s wing, House recorded the epic 1930 sides “My Black Mama” and “Preachin’ the Blues.” Then, he faded into obscurity, only to be rediscovered in the 1960s amid a folk blues revival.
Skip James: Nehemiah Curtis James grew up on the Woodbine Plantation, near Yazoo City, Mississippi. He developed a unique, three-fingered picking style on the guitar. In 1931, he recorded the haunting “Devil Got My Woman” and “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues,” singing in a supernatural moan. James, too, was forgotten, but folk revivalists resurfaced him in the 1960s. He performed at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.
Robert Johnson: Born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, Johnson learned the blues by shadowing Patton and House. He vanished for a spell and then returned with unearthly gifts, having purportedly sold his soul to the devil at a lonely crossroads. In 1936 and 1937, he recorded songs that marked the apex of classic Delta blues, including “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “Cross Road Blues” and “Hell Hound on My Trail.” He died in 1938, all but forgotten until his rediscovery amid the folk blues revival.
Muddy Waters: McKinley Morganfield was born in 1913 and grew up on Stovall Plantation, near Clarksdale. He formed a band and studied the work of House and Johnson. Then, he moved to Chicago, a prime destination for African Americans in the Great Migration. Around 1945, tired of boisterous Chicago crowds, he went electric, creating a whole new idiom of Chicago blues. His breakout 1948 single, “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” might be the signature recording of postwar blues.
John Lee Hooker: The facts are hazy, but Hooker came out of the Delta and migrated north to Detroit, where he made his first recordings in 1948. He scored a hit in 1949 with “Boogie Chillen’,” becoming one of the first guitarists to top the R&B charts. After many singles on independent labels, Hooker crossed over to mainstream success in the folk blues revival. In 1980, he performed “Boom Boom” in the film “The Blues Brothers,” cementing his status as a giant of postwar blues.
B.B. King: Born in the Delta in 1925, Riley B. King crisscrossed Mississippi as a child, working as a sharecropper and migrating with kin. He learned the guitar and formed a gospel quartet in Indianola and then struck out on his own as a sidewalk blues performer. He moved to Memphis, broke into radio and developed a new style of solo guitar, based on the natural vibrato of the human voice. He scored his first hit in 1951 with “3 O’Clock Blues,” launching a career that would redefine the role of guitars and guitarists in popular music. His best-known song is the 1969 single “The Thrill Is Gone.”
Ike Turner: Izear Turner grew up in Clarksdale. By age 18, he worked as a DJ and led his own band. In 1951, Turner took his group to Memphis and recorded “Rocket 88,” a song later cited as the first rock 'n' roll record. He soared to greater fame with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, a band powered by perhaps the greatest frontwoman in rhythm and blues. Their hits include “River Deep – Mountain High” and an incendiary cover of John Fogerty’s “Proud Mary.” Subsequent reports of domestic abuse would dim his legend.
Howlin’ Wolf: Born near West Point, Mississippi, in 1910, Chester Arthur Burnett hitched a train to the Delta at 13. He studied under Charley Patton and developed a distinctive howl. In 1953, Wolf migrated north to Chicago, where he came to rival Waters in renown, recording the classics “Spoonful,” “Smokestack Lightning” and “Back Door Man.” Wolf’s voice, a bone-rattling growl, is his greatest legacy.
Willie Dixon: Born at the Delta’s southern tip in 1915, Dixon followed the Great Migration to Chicago. There, he penned some of the greatest blues songs of the century, delivering hits to Waters, Wolf and other blues greats. His compositions include “Back Door Man,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Little Red Rooster” and “Spoonful.”
Sonny Boy Williamson: Perhaps the greatest Delta harmonica player, Williamson was born Alex Ford around 1912. In the 1930s, he traveled the region and performed with Robert Johnson. In 1941, he landed a coveted DJ job on radio station KFFA in Helena, Arkansas, on the program “King Biscuit Time.” Sponsors rechristened him Sonny Boy Williamson, a name that belonged to another musician. Nowadays, historians call him Sonny Boy II. His signature recordings include “Eyesight to the Blind.”
Elmore James: Born in Richland, Mississippi, in 1918, James first played a one-string guitar and then built a multi-stringed instrument out of a lard can. He studied slide guitar with Johnson. His recording of “Dust My Broom” became an R&B hit in 1952. After that, James migrated between Mississippi and Chicago, touring and recording such classics as “The Sky Is Crying” and “It Hurts Me Too.” James is regarded today as King of the Slide Guitar.
Denise LaSalle: Born in Leflore County, Mississippi, Ora Denise Allen grew up in a sharecropper family in Belzoni and sang in church choirs. She broke through in 1971 with the hit “Trapped By a Thing Called Love,” recorded in Memphis. More hits followed, including “Now Run and Tell That” and “Man Sized Job,” cutting across the genres of soul and blues. By the time of her death in 2018, LaSalle was R&B royalty.
Albert King: Many B.B. King acolytes appeared in the years that followed his rise, but none could top Albert King. He was born Albert Nelson in Indianola, the Mississippi city where B.B. King reached adulthood. He adopted his hero’s last name and claimed to be his half-brother, which he was not. Albert King gained traction in 1967 with the album “Born Under a Bad Sign.” B.B. King marked him as a rival, and the two waged legendary guitar battles onstage. Albert King proved influential in his own right, with an explosive style that inspired many blues rockers.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: Born in 1999 in Clarksdale, Ingram, 26, embodies the next generation of Delta blues. He learned from the masters, and he was playing gigs by adolescence. Since 2019, he has released four albums, won a Grammy, opened for the Rolling Stones and lent his name to a custom Fender Telecaster guitar.
Portions of this report were adapted from the Grove Atlantic book “King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King,” written by Daniel de Vise.
