Have you ever seen Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Keith Richards or Ronnie Wood play slide guitar where they slide a bottle slide up and down the neck of electric guitar?  When you see them or any other musician playing like that, you're seeing the influence of Elmore James come across the generations at you!

You've heard some of Elmore's songs without even realizing it--Stevie Ray Vaughn covered "The Sky Is Crying" in to a top hit.  "Shake Your Moneymaker", a song long performed by Howlin' Wolf, is an Elmore James hit that's been covered by Fleetwood Mac, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, the Black Crows, and others.

In 1999, I journeyed deep into the Mississippi Delta on my "blues history tour", where, in Holmes County, MS, I stopped at an intersection, totally lost when the "blues tourist" map directions turned out to be all wrong.  I'm sitting there in the car when two African-American men pulled up and asked if I needed some help.  I said, "I'm trying to find the New Port Baptist Church where a famous bluesman is buried."  They both smiled and one exclaimed, "Oh, you want to see where El-moooore is...follow my brother-in-law and me."  They turned their pickup truck down a paved road and cruised along for about ten minutes, when they stopped, and pointed into a churchyard.

Parking the car, I wandered around and found the last resting place of a forefather of both electric blues and rock-n-roll, Elmore James.

I remember walking around his gravestone thinking, "How many people play like him?  How many rock songs are based on his playing?  How much did Elmore give us?

The answers eluded me since my questions asked so much.

But you can bet while I was driving away, I was playing some rock-n-roll, namely Stevie Ray Vaughn's cover of "The Sky is Crying" at top volume to say, "Thanks, Elmore!"

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For more information on Elmore James, visit these great web sites:

Elmore James Links (includes a clip of "Dust My Broom)

The Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame Page on Elmore and his induction into the Hall of Fame.  The Hall also lists several of his songs on their list of 500 songs which shaped rock-n-roll

Junior's Juke Joint page on Elmore James (more pics than I have of Elmore's resting place)

Your Music Link's page on Elmore (includes more music clips on a sub-page)

Sliding Delta's page on Elmore

Joel Snow's page on Elmore (with performance pictures!)