I was struggling for a long time on what I wanted to write about for this blog and then it hit me; guitars! Well more specially guitar players and how almost all of them are men. See I know about guitars, my dad has been playing for years. It was his childhood dream to learn and all it took was my brother, who was seven at the time, to even take the smallest interest in playing and my dad was set. While my brother quit three years in, my dad is still going and from him is where I learned all that I know. Even if I can't play that well. I learned that in all of the bands and solo artists my dad and I loved, the guitar player was almost always a man. I never really thought of it before, but I rarely ever saw a woman playing the guitar. Even when I attempted to learn classical guitar myself I was the only girl there getting lessons. So I thought why don't I dedicate this blog to some truly talent female guitar players that have been influential to the guitar playing world.
- Bonnie Raitt: Bonnie Raitt is an American blues rock singer and guitarist from Burbank, California. She is a 13 times Grammy winner, has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and has countless other awards for her music. She worked closely with Warner Brothers from 1977-1988 where she was signed to their record label. Her album Sweet Forgiveness has her first commercial breakthrough in 1977 though she had already been massively successful before hand. She is very involved with activism and in 1985 sang and appeared the video called "Sun City" that was an anti-apartheid song. She also preformed in Farm Aid and Amnesty international concerts. Also she performed in the first Soviet/American Peace Concert as well as organized a benefit for the Countdown 87' to Stop Contra Aid; where she herself also featured. She is a staple in bluesy rock genre. The song below is "I Can't Make You Love Me" from her album 11th Luck of the Draw.
- Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Sister Rosetta Tharpe was American singer and guitarist who rose to popularity in the 1930-40s for her fusion of gospel music and electric guitar. She is considered the first great recording gospel artist and the first to appeal to R&B and Rock and Roll audiences. She had a large influence on early Rock and Roll artists like Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Little Richard. She pioneered using heavy distortion on electric guitar and in turn lead to the creation of electric blues. During her time, guitar playing was considered a masculine skill and she often got the backhanded compliment that she could "play like a man". She was inevitably shunned from the gospel community for preforming in nightclubs. She was such an important figure in blues and in the creation of Rock and Roll, it's awe-inspiring what she accomplished as a queer black woman in the 1930s! The song below is "This Train" and in the video Sister Rosetta is performing it live.
- Nita Strauss: Nita Strauss is an American rock musician currently the touring guitarist for Alice Cooper. Nita had her own band called Lia-Fail that she began touring with when she was a teenager, dropping out of school to pursue music full time. Though she has now worked with a number of rock and metal groups like As Blood Runs Black, Consume the Fire, Femme Fatale and Critical Hit. In April 2018 she kickstarted her own solo album that got funded in under two hours. She produced the record herself and played all of the guitars and basses on the album. She became the first ever female Ibanez (Japanese model of guitar) signature artist and who has her own model guitar, Ibanez JIVA10. Strauss is a huge Los Angeles Rams fan and has preformed interludes and riffs that start crowd chants at games. Her song "Dead Inside" hit number one on the Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart and she was the first female in 32 years to do so.
- honorable mentions: Nancy Wilson, guitarist for the band Heart and Lita Ford, guitarist for all-female group The Runaways
Also special thanks to my dad for giving me recommendations on who to write about and for half of my music taste!
