In the late 1960s blues became amplified with extended guitar improvisations to create blues rock.
Since then it has become a popular genre with some of the biggest and best known rock acts linked to it.
Often the best recordings come from live recordings of their concerts.
The Best Blues Rock Groups & Artists
The links take you through to the best live albums polls that will then guide you to the best live albums based on the votes from the readers.
The Allman Brothers Band – the southern rock masters who lost their leader after only their second album.
Joe Bonamassa – an American blues guitar hero for the21st century.
Captain Beefheart – this artist deconstructs the blues and puts it back together to create something different but interesting.
Eric Clapton – one of the originators of blues rock with Cream, he’s gone on to become one of the best known blues rock artists.
Climax Blues Band – a British blues band with great guitar and saxophone.
The Derek Trucks Band – related to a founder member of the Allman Brothers Band, Derek Trucks is a leading slide guitar player.
Free – led by Paul Rodgers and Paul Kossof, they developed a unique blues rock sound.
Rory Gallagher – an Irish blues great that never had the success that his talent deserved.
Gov’t Mule – Warren Haynes has played with the Allman Brothers Band and the Grateful Dead but this is his band.
Jimi Hendrix – arguably the greatest of them all and who knows where he would have taken blues rock and electric guitar music if he hadn’t died so early.
Janis Joplin – a female blues singer (belter?) who found fame in the San Francisco scene with Big Brother & The Holding Company before she died too young.
Led Zeppelin – for a time, the biggest band in the world and whilst they may be better thought of as hard rock pioneers, they never strayed too far from the blues rock that they started with.
Little Feat – the group who put funk into blues rock.
Van Morrison – a unique artist who developed his own sound in the space between blues rock, soul and R&B, folk and jazz.
Gary Moore – an Irish hard rock guitar hero with Thin Lizzy and in his early solo career, he went on to record some excellent blues rock albums.
The Rolling Stones – the group started as an R&B group and moved to embrace blues rock. At their best in the late 1960s and early 1970s when Mick Taylor replaced Brian Jones on lead guitar.
Robin Trower – after leaving Procul Harem, Trower showed that his heart was in blues rock as he was often accused of cloning Hendrix. Not a bad man to copy if you ask me.
Stevie Ray Vaughan – the bridge between the early guitar heroes and the younger guitarists.
Johnny Winter – proof that even the whitest of the white can play the blues with passion and energy.
What Are The Best Live Albums By Blues Rock Artists And Groups?
To help you to find the best blues rock, I have set up a poll for readers to vote for their favourite albums. I’m pleased to say that it’s got plenty of votes but it will be even better with more.
Loading ...Connected To Blues Rock
Since I’ve been writing, I’ve found how difficult it is to categorise music because the boundaries are blurred.
Blues rock has branched out or influenced other types of music and some artists will cross over those boundaries or blur them entirely.
If you’re interested in blues rock, then I think you may also be interested in the blues, boogie rock, hard rock and heavy metal, psychedelic rock, early R&B and southern rock.
If you don’t see your favourite blues rock acts in my list, it might be because I’ve decided that they fit better into one of the other categories.
Alternatively, it might be because I either don’t know about them or don’t rate them so put me straight by leaving a comment below.