Gary Clark Jr.

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• Top 6 Blues Rock Artists of All Time

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• Eric Clapton

  Eric Clapton is the only artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three separate times, recognized individually and as a member of both The Yardbirds and Cream, reflecting his sustained influence across multiple distinct phases of blues rock's development. His graffiti tag "Clapton is God," spray-painted around London during his early career with The Yardbirds and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, reflected the reverence with which British blues rock fans regarded his guitar playing even before his broader mainstream fame developed. Clapton's 1992 song "Tears in Heaven," written following the tragic death of his four-year-old son, marked a significant stylistic departure into more stripped-down, emotionally direct acoustic material, and the song's success demonstrated his continued commercial relevance decades into his career. His combination of foundational British blues rock guitar innovation and his sustained multi-decade commercial and critical significance has made Clapton one of the most influential guitarists in the entire history of rock music.

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• Stevie Ray Vaughan

  Stevie Ray Vaughan's 1983 debut album Texas Flood is widely credited with sparking a major blues revival in mainstream American rock during the early 1980s, at a time when blues had fallen into relative commercial obscurity compared to its earlier 1960s and '70s prominence. His technically ferocious, emotionally intense guitar playing, drawing directly on Texas blues traditions alongside rock influences, established Vaughan as one of the most respected guitarists of his generation, and his work directly revitalized mainstream interest in traditional blues guitar technique. Vaughan's struggles with substance abuse, which he overcame following treatment in the late 1980s, added a genuine redemption narrative to his broader career story before his tragic death in a 1990 helicopter crash at just 35, cutting short a career many felt was still building toward even greater heights. His combination of genuinely revitalizing mainstream interest in blues guitar and his technically extraordinary playing ability has made Vaughan one of the most influential guitarists in blues rock history, and his catalog remains a foundational reference point for subsequent blues-influenced rock guitarists.

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• The Allman Brothers Band

  The Allman Brothers Band, formed by brothers Duane and Gregg Allman in Macon, Georgia in 1969, blended blues rock with jazz-influenced improvisation and Southern rock instrumentation, and their extended, largely improvised live performances established a jam-oriented approach that significantly influenced the subsequent jam band movement. Their 1971 live album At Fillmore East is widely regarded as one of the greatest live rock albums ever recorded, showcasing the band's extended improvisational interplay and the twin lead guitar work of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts. Duane Allman's death in a motorcycle accident in 1971, followed by bassist Berry Oakley's death in a similar accident just over a year later near the same intersection, gave the band's history a genuinely tragic dimension that significantly shaped their subsequent decades of activity. The Allman Brothers Band's combination of genuinely innovative blues-jazz-rock fusion and their foundational role in establishing Southern rock and the broader jam band tradition has made them one of the most musically influential blues rock acts in American music history.

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• ZZ Top

  ZZ Top, formed in Houston in 1969, built one of the longest continuously active lineups in rock history, with all three original members remaining together for more than five decades until bassist Dusty Hill's 2021 death, a level of lineup stability rare among major rock bands of any genre. Their combination of Texas blues rock foundations with the band's distinctively minimalist, groove-driven guitar riffs established a specific regional blues rock sound that distinguished ZZ Top from more overtly flashy blues rock contemporaries. The band's extended, dramatically long beards, worn by guitarist Billy Gibbons and bassist Dusty Hill, became one of the most recognizable visual images in rock music, and their 1983 album Eliminator successfully incorporated synthesizers into their blues rock foundation for a major commercial crossover breakthrough. ZZ Top's combination of sustained lineup stability across five decades and their distinctive Texas blues rock sound has made them one of the most enduringly successful and visually recognizable blues rock bands in American music history.

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• John Mayer

  John Mayer, initially known primarily as a mainstream pop-rock singer-songwriter, gradually established himself as one of the most technically respected blues guitarists of his generation, particularly through his work with the John Mayer Trio and his sustained study of blues guitar technique. His collaboration with surviving members of the Grateful Dead in Dead & Company, formed in 2015, gave Mayer significant credibility within the broader jam band and blues-rock improvisational community, a considerable stylistic shift from his earlier mainstream pop stardom. Mayer's technical guitar playing has drawn direct comparisons to blues rock guitarists including Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton, reflecting a level of respect from serious blues guitar enthusiasts unusual for an artist who first became famous primarily as a mainstream pop singer-songwriter. His combination of genuine technical blues guitar mastery, developed alongside his separate mainstream pop career, and his significant credibility within the jam band community through Dead & Company has made Mayer one of the more unexpectedly significant contemporary figures in blues rock.

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More in Music

• Naftule's Dream

  Naftule's Dream grew out of the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, a Boston-area group that had already been playing traditional klezmer for 14 years before Newton, Massachusetts-born clarinetist Glenn Dickson and accordionist-songwriter Michael McLaughlin spun off a more adventurous, improvisation-focused outlet from within it. The band released two records on their own, "Search for the Golden Dreydl" in 1997 and "Smash, Clap" in 1998, before going on to record three further albums for composer John Zorn's Tzadik label under its Radical Jewish Culture series, a significant marker of downtown-avant-garde credibility. The Boston Globe praised the group for fusing "klezmer music, Phish-like improvisation, and radical Yiddish poetry," a description that captured how directly the band pushed past traditional acoustic klezmer instrumentation and arrangement. Their combination of their roots in a 14-year-old traditional klezmer orchestra and their three albums on John Zorn's boundary-pushing Tzadik label has made Naftule's Dream one of the most musically adventurous bands in the klezmer revival movement.

• Brave Old World

  Brave Old World formed in 1989 with members drawn from California, Chicago, New York, and Berlin, an unusually international lineup for a klezmer band, originally featuring clarinetist Joel Rubin, drummer Ben Bazyler, multi-instrumentalist Stu Brotman (a former member of 1960s rock band Kaleidoscope and a sideman for Canned Heat), keyboardist Alan Bern, and violinist Michael Alpert. Rubin was later replaced by Kurt Bjorling, musical director of the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble since 1984, bringing another deeply credentialed klezmer specialist into the lineup. The Washington Post called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup," noting that "every player is a virtuoso," and the band won first prize at the 1992 International Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel, a significant early validation from within the genre's own community. Their combination of their genuinely international, virtuoso-level lineup and their 1992 Safed festival win has made Brave Old World one of the most artistically respected bands in the klezmer revival.

• Kapelye

  Kapelye was assembled in 1979 when ethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik organized a group of musicians to perform at a klezmer lecture at Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island; the November 18, 1979 debut went well enough that the musicians agreed on the spot to keep performing together as a full-time band. The group took its name from the Yiddish word for "a band" and began actively researching and collecting turn-of-the-century klezmer recordings, drawing several members, including fiddler and vocalist Michael Alpert, from the overlapping Balkan music community. Their 1981 debut album, "Future & Past," mixed traditional Yiddish folk ballads with labor and political anthems and songs pulled directly from Yiddish theater, and the band followed it with "Levine & His Flying Machine" in 1985 and "Chicken" in 1987, before "Old-Time Jewish American Radio" became their most successful release. Their combination of Sapoznik's foundational archival research and their genre-launching 1981 debut album has made Kapelye one of the most historically significant bands in klezmer's modern revival movement.

• Andy Statman

  Andy Statman, born in New York City in 1950, started on banjo and guitar at 12 before switching to mandolin, which he studied briefly under lifelong friend David Grisman, and by 1970 he was playing in the experimental bluegrass group Country Cooking, followed by stints with David Bromberg's band. In 1975, Statman sought out klezmer clarinet legend Dave Tarras and became his protégé; Tarras wrote melodies specifically for him and eventually bequeathed Statman four of his own clarinets, deliberately passing the older master's living klezmer lineage directly to him. His late-1970s album "Jewish Klezmer Music" became a touchstone recording for that decade's klezmer revival, released alongside his mandolin-focused "Flatbush Waltz," and the National Endowment for the Arts later named him a National Heritage Fellow, the nation's highest honor in the traditional arts. His combination of his direct mentorship under Dave Tarras and his rare parallel mastery of klezmer clarinet and bluegrass mandolin has made Statman one of the most historically important figures in klezmer's modern revival.

• Giora Feidman

  Giora Feidman was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires to a family of klezmer musicians spanning his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, and by 18 he was already leading clarinetist of the orchestra at Argentina's Teatro Colón before joining the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1957 on the recommendation of conductor Paul Kletzki. He played with the Israel Philharmonic until 1974, then launched a solo career and was crowned "the King of Klezmer" in New York already in the 1970s, well before klezmer's broader American revival movement took hold in subsequent decades. In the early 1990s, Steven Spielberg invited Feidman to record alongside violinist Itzhak Perlman on the score for "Schindler's List," and Feidman's solo clarinet became a defining voice on that soundtrack, which went on to win the Academy Award. His combination of a multi-generational klezmer family lineage and his solo clarinet performance on the Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" score has made Feidman one of the most significant ambassadors for klezmer music worldwide.