LONG BEFORE HE FLEW LIKE AN EAGLE, STEVE MILLER LEARNED HIS FIRST BLUES LICKS — LITERALLY AT THE FOOT OF THE MASTER, T-BONE WALKER BY ALAN PAUL
STEVE MILLER IS best known as the creator of classic rock staples like “The Joker,” “Fly Like an Eagle,” “Rock’n Me” and “Jungle Love.” The Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits 1974-78 collection has sold more than 13 million copies, making it one of the top-selling rock albums of all time. But before all of that, Miller, who grew up in Dallas, began his career as a bluesman — and he is thoughtful and insightful about the music’s history.
Miller considers T-Bone Walker to be the father of modern blues guitar, and he has an extra-personal reason for making sure the Texas great’s legacy is properly respected; Walker was a family friend who taught the nine-year-old future legend his first licks. He was happy to share his thoughts about the blues icon.
What makes T-Bone such an important figure in the history of the electric guitar?
It’s all about the changeover from country blues to city blues. T-Bone was one of the very first guys who played electric guitar, along with Charlie Christian, who was a good friend of his. When T-Bone bought his Gibson guitar in 1936, it changed everything! T-Bone was the first guy through the gate and he was maybe the smartest, the most sophisticated and most interesting musically. He’s like the Duke Ellington of country blues.
He watched jazz guys and picked up chords, and all of a sudden he’s written “Stormy Monday Blues.” That changed the way electric blues is played. Nobody else played anything like that, and he opened the door. A whole lot of people said, “I want to do that.” B.B. King, Freddie King, Albert King, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan and every other blues and rock electric guitarist who has come down the pike started there. You go from the staccato jazz licks to the fat, soaring Albert King lead guitar and, of course, Chuck Berry, the father of rock guitar whose primary licks all came from T-Bone.
But he wasn’t actually the first guy to play an electric guitar.
Les Paul had built an electric guitar and amplifier and was recording with Bing Crosby, and it was all brand-new stuff. T-Bone heard that and adapted. Before that, he was playing banjo because it would cut through the orchestra, and that explains a lot about his playing. When he first started doing the splits and all that, he was doing it with a banjo!
He started figuring out the instrument by just goin
