This week, in honor of Black History Month, four great African American blues guitarists are featured. Dan Cross shows you how to play licks in the style of the great blues masters; some of the greatest African American guitarists on the planet.
http://guitar.about.com/entertainment/guitar/library/weekly/aa020700a.htm

Included in each case is a short transcription (with tab) of one of the guitarist's solos. Also, each guitarist's playing style is briefly analyzed. When possible, audio clips of the transcribed performance have been included. Included in the feature: guitar tab of Robert Johnson, T. Bone Walker, B.B. King, and Albert King.

ROBERT JOHNSON
Robert Johnson is generally considered by the pop music world to be the grand-daddy of the blues. While serious blues afficianados know there were many blues musicians before Johnson that made a significant impact, there can be no denying the guitarist/singer's huge contributions to the music. Some of the most admired aspects of Robert Johnson's guitar work were his intros and "turnarounds" (the phrase at the end of a form of a song that leads the music back to the beginning again). Here you'll find one of Robert Johnson's intros to a 12-bar blues in the key of A, in both standard notation and tab:
http://guitar.about.com/entertainment/guitar/library/weekly/aa020700b.htm

T. BONE WALKER
T. Bone Walker (Aaron Thibeault Walker) approached blues from a slightly different angle than many of the other guitarists of the period. An associate of jazz guitar pioneer Charlie Christian, Walker began to include notes in his solos not often found in traditional blues music. T. Bone also tended to play long phrases of eighth notes, another custom common among jazz musicians. In recordings that date back as far as 1929, Walker can be heard working color tones like the 9th into his blues riffs; a technique that guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan explored extensively over 50 years later. The following short example of a T. Bone Walker riff, starting on bar 9 of a blues in G, should illustrate the guitarist's interest in color tones:
http://guitar.about.com/entertainment/guitar/library/weekly/aa020700c.htm

ALBERT KING
Albert King is possibly the most influential of the modern-era blues guitarists. The musician's guitar playing has become entrenched in the modern tradition of blues guitar, largely through the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan. Vaughan regularly borrowed directly from King's arsenal of guitar riffs. Stevie Ray Vaughan wasn't the only one, though; an entire generation of blues guitarists still consider King to be the ultimate modern blues musician. The following is a very short fragment of an Albert King solo on a 12-bar blues in G. The clip is taken from the first few bars in the guitarist's solo:
http://guitar.about.com/entertainment/guitar/library/weekly/aa020700e.htm

Find more of Albert King's solos with Guitar Notes:
http://www.guitarnotes.com/tabs/tabsearch.cgi%3Fquery=albert%2Bking%26engine=tabs