“You can only imagine the effect this had on the young Keith Richards and Eric Clapton”: 9 must-hear albums that fueled the British blues guitar boom

Muddy Waters performs live on stage playing a Fender Telecaster guitar at the New Victoria Theatre, during the Newport Jazz Festival in London on October 30, 1976.

It is hard to overstate the impact of the ‘60s British blues guitar scene, when a new generation of guitar heroes mined the original source of blues playing and put their own spin on it.

In doing so, they not only brought blues into the mainstream, calling attention to the original pioneers, but reconfigured popular culture, providing a launching pad for the big beasts of rock that would emerge in the decade that followed.