Slide guitar is a way to play the guitar that is often used in blues music. The player holds a hard object, called a slide, against the strings. This creates smooth sliding sounds and deep wobbles that sound like the human voice. Usually, the guitar is held flat against the body, and the slide is placed on one of the guitarist's fingers. The slide can be made of metal or glass, like the neck of a bottle, which is why this style is sometimes called bottleneck guitar. The strings are plucked, not strummed, while the slide moves across the strings to change the pitch. Sometimes, the guitar is placed on the player's lap and played with a hand-held bar, called a lap steel guitar.

People have used slides on stringed instruments for a long time, including African instruments and the steel guitar from Hawaii. In the early 1900s, blues musicians in the Mississippi Delta made bottleneck slide guitar popular. The first recorded slide guitar performance was by Sylvester Weaver in 1923. From the 1930s onward, musicians like Robert Johnson, Robert Nighthawk, Earl Hooker, Elmore James, and Muddy Waters helped spread slide guitar in electric blues. Their work influenced later musicians in rock music, such as the Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Duane Allman, and Ry Cooder. Early pioneers of lap slide guitar include Oscar "Buddy" Woods, "Black Ace" Turner, and Freddie Roulette.

History

The method of using a hard object to press against a plucked string began with the diddley bow, which came from a one-stringed African instrument. The diddley bow is thought to be an earlier version of the bottleneck style. In the late 1800s, European sailors brought the Spanish guitar to Hawaii. Hawaiian musicians loosened some guitar strings from the usual tuning to create a chord, a technique called "slack-key" guitar, now known as open tuning. Using this method, Hawaiians found it easier to play simple three-chord songs by sliding a metal object along the guitar's fretboard and playing the instrument across their laps. By the end of the 1800s, a Hawaiian man named Joseph Kekuku became skilled at using a steel bar against the guitar strings. This bar was called the "steel," leading to the name "steel guitar." Kekuku helped spread this method, and some sources say he created the technique. In the early 1900s, this "Hawaiian guitar" style became popular in the United States. Sol Hoʻopiʻi, a Hawaiian guitarist, arrived in the U.S. mainland in 1919 at age 17 as a stowaway on a ship to San Francisco. His music became widely known in the late 1920s, and he recorded songs such as "Hula Blues" and "Farewell Blues." Author Pete Madsen wrote that Hoʻopiʻi's playing influenced many musicians in rural Mississippi.

Most early blues slide guitar players lived in the southern United States, especially the Mississippi Delta. Their music likely came from African traditions passed down to African-American sharecroppers who sang while working in fields. The earliest Delta blues musicians were often solo performers who played both guitar and sang. In 1903, W. C. Handy described hearing slide guitar for the first time at a train station, where a musician pressed a knife against the guitar strings in a way similar to how Hawaiian guitarists used steel bars. Blues historian Gérard Herzhaft noted that Tampa Red was among the first Black musicians inspired by Hawaiian guitarists in the early 1900s. He adapted their style to fit blues music. Tampa Red, along with Kokomo Arnold, Casey Bill Weldon, and Oscar Woods, used the Hawaiian method to play longer melodies with the slide instead of short musical phrases.

In the early 1900s, steel guitar playing split into two styles: bottleneck-style, played on a traditional Spanish guitar held flat against the body; and lap-style, played on instruments designed or modified to be played on the performer's lap. The bottleneck-style was often linked to blues music and was popularized by African-American blues artists. The Mississippi Delta was home to blues pioneers like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Charlie Patton, who used slide guitar. The first recorded performance of the bottleneck style was in 1923 by Sylvester Weaver, who played two instrumentals, "Guitar Blues" and "Guitar Rag." Guitarist and author Woody Mann identified Tampa Red and Blind Willie Johnson as musicians who developed the most unique styles in the recorded history of the time.

Influential early electric slide guitarists

In the 1930s, the guitar was made electric, which helped solos on the instrument be heard more clearly and played a bigger role in music. In the 1940s, guitarists like Robert Nighthawk and Earl Hooker made electric slide guitar popular. Unlike earlier players, they used standard tuning, which let them switch easily between slide guitar and regular guitar playing. This was helpful for playing rhythm parts in music.

Robert Nighthawk, whose real name was Robert Lee McCollum, recorded many songs in the 1930s under the name Robert Lee McCoy. He played with blues musicians like John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson and used a style influenced by Tampa Red. Around World War II, he changed his last name to Nighthawk and became one of the first to use electric slide guitar with a metal slide. His playing was smooth and clean, with a gentle touch on the strings. He helped spread songs like "Black Angel Blues" and "Anna Lou Blues" in his electric style. These songs later became part of the music of Earl Hooker, B.B. King, and others. His style influenced both Muddy Waters and Earl Hooker. Nighthawk is credited with helping bring Mississippi music into the Chicago blues style.

As a teenager, Earl Hooker, who was related to John Lee Hooker, studied under Nighthawk. In the late 1940s, they toured together across the South. Nighthawk had a strong influence on Hooker’s playing. By 1953, when Hooker recorded "Sweet Angel" (a tribute to Nighthawk’s song "Sweet Little Angel"), Hooker had developed his own unique style. His solos sounded like a human voice, and music writer Andy Grigg said, "He could make his guitar weep, moan, and talk like a person… his slide playing was unmatched, even better than his teacher, Robert Nighthawk." This vocal-like style is heard in Hooker’s instrumental "Blue Guitar," which later had a vocal added by Muddy Waters and became "You Shook Me." Unlike many blues players, Hooker used a wah-wah pedal in the 1960s to make his guitar sound more like a human voice.

Elmore James was one of the most influential electric blues slide guitarists of his time. He became famous with his 1951 song "Dust My Broom," a remake of Robert Johnson’s 1936 song "I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom." The song includes a series of triplets that Rolling Stone magazine called "one immortal lick," a sound still used in many blues songs today. Although Johnson had used similar patterns, James’ electric sound made the triplet rhythm more powerful and became a key part of early rock music, as noted by historian Ted Gioia. Unlike Nighthawk and Hooker, James used an open E tuning and a bottleneck to create a full-chord sliding effect. Other popular songs by James, such as "It Hurts Me Too" (first recorded by Tampa Red), "The Sky Is Crying," and "Shake Your Moneymaker," feature his slide guitar playing.

Muddy Waters, born McKinley Morganfield, first recorded using an acoustic slide guitar but became best known for his electric slide playing. He helped bring Delta blues to Chicago and played a major role in creating the city’s electric blues style. He was also one of the first to use electric slide guitar. Songs like "I Can’t Be Satisfied" (1948), "Rollin’ and Tumblin’," "Rollin’ Stone," "Louisiana Blues," and "Still a Fool" featured his slide guitar. Early in his career, he used open G tuning, but later switched to standard tuning and often used a capo to change keys. He played single notes with a small metal slide on his little finger, dampened the strings, and controlled the amount of distortion by adjusting the volume. Writer Ted Drozdowski noted, "One last factor to consider is slide vibrato, achieved by shaking a slide back and forth. Muddy’s slide vibrato was extreme, both wild and controlled, adding excitement to his playing."

Early developments in rock music

In the early 1960s, rock musicians started using electric slide guitar. In the UK, bands like the Rolling Stones, who admired Chicago blues and artists from Chess Records, began recording songs by musicians such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. The Rolling Stones' second single, "I Wanna Be Your Man" (1963), included a slide guitar break by Brian Jones. This may have been the first use of slide guitar on a rock record. Critic Richie Unterberger noted that Jones's slide guitar added a strong bluesy sound to the song. Jones also played slide guitar on the band's 1964 single "Little Red Rooster," which reached number one in the UK. One of his final contributions to a Stones recording was his acoustic slide guitar on "No Expectations," which biographer Paul Trynka described as quiet and not too loud, showing the journey Jones had taken since 1961.

In Chicago, Mike Bloomfield visited blues clubs as early as the late 1950s. By the early 1960s, musicians like Muddy Waters and harmonica expert Little Walter supported Bloomfield and let him join jam sessions. Waters said, "Mike was a great guitar player. He learned a lot of slide from me." Bloomfield's slide guitar work caught the attention of Paul Butterfield, and together with guitarist Elvin Bishop, they formed the classic lineup of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Their first album, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (1965), included Bloomfield's slide guitar on adaptations of two songs by Elmore James. "Shake Your Moneymaker" showed his skilled slide style, and "Look Over Yonder's Wall" was ranked number 27 on Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time." Around the same time, Bloomfield recorded with Bob Dylan for the Highway 61 Revisited album, adding slide guitar to the title track. On the East-West (1966) album, songs like "Walkin' Blues" and "Two Trains Running" highlighted his slide guitar work, drawing attention from listeners.

Ry Cooder was a young musical talent who began learning bottleneck guitar techniques at age 15 and studied songs by Robert Johnson. In 1964, Cooder and Taj Mahal formed the Rising Sons, one of the earliest blues rock bands. His early guitar work appeared on Captain Beefheart's debut album Safe as Milk (1967) and on Taj Mahal's 1968 self-titled album. In 1968, Cooder worked with the Rolling Stones, playing slide guitar on "Memo from Turner." The song later appeared on the 1970 film Performance soundtrack and was ranked number 92 on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time" list. In 1970, Cooder released his self-titled debut album, which included a slide guitar version of the Blind Willie Johnson song "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" (re-recorded in 1984 for the Paris, Texas soundtrack). By 1967, Cooder was recognized as a master of slide guitar, and in 2003, Rolling Stone ranked him number eight on its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."

Duane Allman's slide guitar work with the Allman Brothers Band helped shape Southern rock. He also added memorable slide guitar to Derek and the Dominos' Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album, especially the title track, which was ranked number 13 on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitar Songs" list. Allman, who died in a motorcycle accident at age 24, was praised by NPR's Nick Morrison as "the most inventive slide guitarist of his era." He expanded the use of slide guitar by copying the harmonica sounds of Sonny Boy Williamson II, most clearly in the Allman Brothers' live recording of Williamson's "One Way Out," which appears on their Eat a Peach album.

Technique

The slide guitar, as explained by music teacher Keith Wyatt, can be described as a "one-finger fretless guitar." The position of the slide on a string controls the pitch, similar to how a steel guitar works. The slide is gently placed on the high strings to avoid touching the frets. Frets are used here only as a guide, and playing without their strict pitch limits allows for smooth, expressive sliding notes that are common in blues music. This technique combines features of a steel guitar and a traditional guitar because the player’s other fingers and thumb can still press the frets to create rhythm or play extra notes. The guitar can be tuned in the standard way or in open tunings. Many early blues musicians used open tunings, but modern slide players often use both types. A major challenge with open tunings is that they usually only allow one simple chord to be played easily, depending on how the guitar is tuned. Two-note intervals can be played by angling the slide on certain notes.

In the sixteenth century, the notes A–D–G–B–E were used to tune guitar-like instruments. Later, a low E was added, making E–A–D–G–B–E the standard tuning for guitars. In open tunings, the strings are set to sound a chord when not pressed, and this is often a major chord. Common open tunings used with slide guitar include open D or Vestapol tuning (D–A–D–F♯–A–D) and open G or Spanish tuning (D–G–D–G–B–D). Open E and open A tunings, which are a whole tone higher than open D and G, are also frequently used. Other tunings, such as drop D (where the low E string is lowered to D), are popular among slide guitarists. This tuning allows for power chords, which include the root, fifth, and octave notes in the lower strings, while the other strings remain in standard tuning. Robert Johnson, whose playing influenced musicians like Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, and Johnny Winter, used standard tuning, open G, open D, and drop D tunings.

Resonator guitars

The National String Instrument Corporation created the first metal-body resonator guitars in the late 1920s (as shown in the image at the beginning of the article). These guitars were popular with early slide players and had a large aluminum cone, shaped like an upside-down loudspeaker, attached under the bridge to make the sound louder. The design was patented in the late 1920s by the Dopyera brothers and was used on many types of guitars. It was also adapted for the mandolin and ukulele.

Tampa Red played a gold-plated National Tricone style 4 guitar and was one of the first Black musicians to record with this instrument. Delta blues pioneer Son House used this type of guitar in songs such as "Death Letter." A resonator guitar with a metal body was played by Bukka White in songs like "Parchman Farm Blues" and "Fixin' to Die Blues."

Lap slide guitar

Lap slide guitar is not a specific instrument. It is a style of playing blues or rock music with the guitar placed horizontally, also called the Hawaiian style. This style is sometimes called lap-steel guitar, but musicians in these genres often use the word "slide" instead of "steel." Some players use a flat pick or their fingers to play, rather than finger picks. There are several types of instruments made or adapted for horizontal playing, including:

• A traditional guitar that has been changed for lap slide by raising the bridge and/or nut to lift the strings higher off the fretboard;
• Steel guitars, including electric versions like lap steel, console steel, and pedal steel. These use a solid metal bar, called a "steel," pressed against the strings, which is where the name "steel guitar" comes from;
• National or Dobro-style guitars. These are usually acoustic steel guitars with a resonator. Different makers made versions with wood or steel bodies, but National is most closely linked to the steel-bodied type. These instruments have different sounds—Nationals often sound brighter and are preferred by blues musicians. They can be played in the traditional way or horizontally;
• A Hawaiian-style guitar modified with extra strings called drone and sympathetic strings, used in Indian classical music. This instrument is known as a mohan veena.

Lap slide guitar pioneers

Buddy Woods was a street performer from Louisiana who recorded music in the 1930s. He was known as "The Lone Wolf" because of his most famous song, "Lone Wolf Blues." From 1936 to 1938, he recorded ten songs that are now considered classic, including "Don't Sell It, Don't Give It Away." In 1940, Woods recorded five songs for the US Library of Congress in Shreveport, Louisiana, such as "Boll Weevil Blues" and "Sometimes I Get a Thinkin'."

"Black Ace" Turner (born Babe Karo Turner) was a blues musician from Texas who was mentored by Buddy Woods. Historian Gérard Herzhaft noted that "Black Ace is one of the few blues guitarists to have played in the purest Hawaiian style, that is, with the guitar flat on the knees." Turner used a specific type of guitar called a square-neck National "style 2" Tri-cone metal body guitar and played a glass medicine bottle as a slide. He was also a skilled storyteller, which allowed him to host a radio show in Fort Worth named The Black Ace. His career ended when he joined the military in 1943. His album, I Am the Boss Card in Your Hand, included recordings from the 1930s and new songs from 1960. Turner appeared in a 1962 documentary called The Blues.

Freddie Roulette (born Frederick Martin Roulette) is a blues musician from San Francisco who became interested in the lap steel guitar when he was young. He was skilled enough to perform with famous musicians in Chicago blues clubs. He used an A7 tuning with a slant-bar style and never used finger picks. He joined Earl Hooker's band and recorded with Hooker in the 1960s. Before focusing on blues, Roulette played the lap steel guitar in other music styles, which helped him add more complex chords to the basic blues played by Hooker. He said, "it worked." Roulette was brought to San Francisco in the mid-1970s by Charlie Musselwhite. In 1997, he released a solo album, Back in Chicago: Jammin' with Willie Kent and the Gents, which won the Best Blues Album of 1997 from Living Blues Magazine. Roulette's work showed that a lap-played instrument could match the style of Chicago blues.

Slides and steels

A slide placed around a finger can be made from any smooth, hard material that helps produce sound. Different materials affect how long the sound lasts, the quality of the sound, and how loud it is. Glass or metal are the most common choices. Longer slides cover all six strings but prevent the finger from pressing down on the strings. A shorter slide allows the fingertip to stick out, letting the finger press the strings to make notes.

People often use items like pipes, rings, knives, spoons, and glass bottles as slides. Early blues players sometimes used a knife, such as Blind Willie Johnson (pocket or penknife) and CeDell Davis (butterknife). Duane Allman used a glass medicine bottle. Syd Barrett, a founder of Pink Floyd, used a Zippo lighter as a slide, mostly for special effects. Jimi Hendrix used a cigarette lighter during his solo on "All Along the Watchtower." This is one of the few recordings where Hendrix plays slide guitar, and biographer Harry Shapiro notes he played it with the guitar on his lap.

Guitars designed to be played on the lap use a solid steel piece instead of a hollow tube. The shape and size of the slide depend on the player's preference. The most common steel slide is a solid metal cylinder with one rounded end. Some players choose steel slides with deep grooves on each side for better grip, and some have squared ends. A better grip helps with fast vibrato techniques in blues music. This design also makes it easier to play hammer-on and pull-off notes.