Blind Willie McTell - The Early Years 1927-1933

Like so many other Delta blues musicians of the 1930s and 40s, rock music owes a debt of gratitude to the works of Blind Willie McTell. Considered one of the finest guitarists and vocalists of the era, noteworthy for his then unheard of usage of a 12-string guitar, artists and bands from The Allman Brothers to The White Stripes to Taj Mahal have listed the blind bluesman as a key influence. From the start of his career in 1927, McTell cut numerous singles for Victor Records, and maintained a noteworthy level of popularity in his home of Atlanta, but like many of his contemporaries, his career skidded to a halt during World War II. McTell left music during the 1950s and later passed of a brain hemmorage in 1959. – Not long after his passing would come the British blues explosion, which would not only make household names of Eric Clapton and John Mayall, but spark a renewed interest in the material of classic bluesmen like McTell. It wasn’t long before innumerable collections of such mat