Billy Butler

A tasty soul-jazz and blues guitarist, Billy Butler adroitly mixed a Charlie Christian approach with '50s R&B grooves and backbeats. He coaxed a warm, fat tone from his hollow-bodied electric guitar, and provided deceptively simple solos and fills that became staples of the R&B guitar vocabularly. Bill Doggett's "Honky Tonk," featuring Butler, is perhaps the prototype R&B guitar instrumental. ...more