Whatever the worldly origins of using a glass or metal object to slide across the strings of a guitar, this style has become famously associated with the blues. For many of the finest early blues practitioners it was the ultimate mode of musical expression as it could emulate the sound of the human voice to great effect.

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The profound effect of the bottleneck style on the Mississippi Delta blues is demonstrated by legends such as Charley Patton, Son House and Bukka White. They were able to harness the heightened resonance and volume that it allowed, and create extraordinary effects such as that of a train whistle. Bukka White’s ‘Jitterbug Swing’ shows how his guitar style was influenced by playing the diddley bow or jitterbug as a child, a single-stringed instrument played using a slide and thought to derive from West Africa.

Far away from the raw intensity of the Delta blues sound, both Barbecue Bob and Curley Weaver were prominent figures on the East Coast who displayed bottleneck finesse with an incredible rhythmic feel. Also from the East Coast, Darby And Tarleton were a white, early country music duo whose playing was heavily influenced by the Hawaiian guitar style popular in American mainstream culture at the time, and largely responsible for spreading the slide guitar craze throughout the country.