Electric blues refers to any type of
blues music distinguished by the use of electric
amplification for musical instruments. The
guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers
T-Bone Walker in the late 1930s and
John Lee Hooker and
Muddy Waters in the 1940s. Their styles developed into
West Coast blues,
Detroit blues, and post-World War II
Chicago blues, which differed from earlier, predominantly acoustic-style blues. By the early 1950s,
Little Walter was a featured soloist on
blues harmonica or blues harp using a small hand-held microphone fed into a guitar amplifier. Although it took a little longer, the electric
bass guitar gradually replaced the stand-up bass by the early 1960s. Electric organs and especially keyboards later became widely used in electric blues.