In all of Walter Trout’s decades of recording and performing among the blues greats, there is one electric guitarist who stands out in his mind from all the others.
Trout, who released his latest album Broken earlier this year, watched legends of the late 1960s like Jimi Hendrix and the members of Cream perform while he was only 17 or 18 years old—years before he followed in Eric Clapton’s footsteps to play lead guitar for John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.
“I saw both of those bands literally from the front row,” Trout said of Hendrix and Cream during a recent interview with Blues Jazz Scenes. While he described those experiences as “incredible” and “amazing,” the four-time Blues Music Awards winner said he isn’t moved by technical prowess alone.
“I’m always amazed, and my jaw is on the floor, at technical wizards—people who are almost, you know, not even human,” he said. “But it doesn’t speak to me. I’d rather hear B.B. King play one note.”
Trout was quick to clarify that this inclination is “just my opinion,” a personal preference when it comes to the qualities he looks for in a guitar great.
“I look for the feeling and the soul, and that’s why somebody like B.B. King or Stevie Ray [Vaughan] or Buddy Guy or Albert Collins, or, somebody like that who, it’s more about the heart and the soul,” Trout explained before quickly adding Steve Lukather to the list. “These are the guys who I admire.”
There is one guitarist in particular whose playing style and heart left a lasting impression on Trout. “I do think the greatest electric guitarist that I ever heard that appealed to me was Jeff Beck,” he said.
“We did a show with him in Holland, and my wife and I were able to sort of stand in the monitor booth and watch him from 10 feet away,” Trout recalled. “He destroyed me. He not only wowed me technically, but he made me cry. It wasn’t just technique. It was soul and emotion and feeling and expression. He spoke through his guitar.”
Trout grew emotional as he remembered watching Beck, who died last year at 78 after contracting bacterial meningitis, in his element onstage.
“I can honestly say that that Jeff Beck show that we watched, I came out of that—” Trout paused, his voice sounding like he was on the verge of tears as he remembered the moment. “It’s hard to even talk about what he did to me, with his playing. So that guy, to me, was the greatest I ever heard.”
