Blues » Texas Blues » Electric Texas Blues

The geographical subgenre known as Texas blues has encompassed a number of style variations over the decades, but its longest-lasting and most developed is its electric incarnation. This change in the region's sound came after World War II, bringing with it a fully electric style -- largely pioneered by T-Bone Walker -- that featured jazzy, single-string soloing over predominantly horn-driven backing. The style stayed much the same throughout the 1950s, but started moving toward a smaller combo, sans horn section, as the decade moved on. But as much of an uptown sound as Electric Texas Blues represented, its juke-joint roadhouse roots were never too far below the surface, with artists like Lightnin' Hopkins, Juke Boy Bonner, Hop Wilson, and Frankie Lee Sims rocking the joint in duo and trio formats with a frightening intensity. The style moved away from the larger horn-led sounds to smaller and smaller combo formats, eventually embracing much of the same instrumentation as the electric Chicago style, with even more emphasis placed on the lead guitar work. The genre stays current and thriving with a spate of regional performers primarily working in small combo contexts, with a great many of them hailing from the Austin area.