You don't need a musical instrument to play the Blues. But there has yet to be an instrument as well suited for the Blues as the guitar. It's 4 octive range, ease of playing, tonal versatilty, cheap price, and portable size make the guitar the "King of Blues Instruments". The most famous Blues musicians are guitar players.
The history of the modern guitar is like the history of the Blues. Diverse cultures coming together to make a new hybrid. The traditional European Latin guitar, which evolved to it's modern form in the mid 1800s, and the Far East/Middle East/African Banjo brought to America with slavery. Luthiers (guitar makers)in this country blended the two to create new styles of guitars that were taken up by musicians as thier "poor man's piano".
One of the most famous acoustic guitar styles, the Resophonic, was embraced by musicians seeking the loudest instrumentpossible. In the days before electric instruments and amplification it was almost impossible for a guitar to be heard over the din of an excited crowd.
The resophonic combined the standard guitar structure and style with a diaphragm placed under the bridge that vibrates when a string is plucked. The drum-with-strings-on-it-effect gives the instrument a more percussive higher pitch that can cut through ambient noise. Add to that a steel body and you have one loud guitar, and a loud guitar always has, and always will be the passion of the guitar player. Tampa Red 1904 - 1981 was the first to record on a resophonic guitar in 1928. The National Steel Guitar Company became the standard and you can still see Blues artists playing these vintage guitars.
Hear Tampa Red play a resophonic guitar on How Long, How Long Blues.
