For over 100 years, the world’s greatest blues guitarists have been leaving behind a trail of amazing guitar solos in their wake.
Blending blues scales and pentatonics with their own rule-breaking formulas, these great blues guitarists have crafted us a treasure trove of awesome solos to learn.
Once you get a few of these under your belt, you’ll start to really understand how good solos are made.
So if you want to really learn how to make your guitar sing, there’s no better place to start than mastering some of the best blues guitar solos.
Top-Rated Blues Guitar Solos of All-Time
- The Thrill Is Gone – B.B. King – Tab
- Bell Bottom Blues – Eric Clapton – Tab
- Folsom Prison Blues – Johnny Cash – Tab
- Sweet Dreams – Roy Buchanan – Tab
- Pride and Joy – Stevie Ray Vaughan – Tab
- Sure Got Cold After the Rain Fell – ZZ Top – Tab
- Crossroads – Cream – Tab
- Red House – Jimi Hendrix – Tab
- Sweet Little Angel – B.B. King – Tab
- Autumn Leaves – Eric Clapton – Tab
- Royz Bluz – Roy Buchanan – Tab
- Blues Power – Eric Clapton – Tab
- Tin Pan Alley – Stevie Ray Vaughan – Tab
- Still Got the Blues – Gary Moore – Tab
- Roadhouse Blues – The Doors – Tab
- I Loved Another Woman – Fleetwood Mac – Tab
- Blue on Black – Kenny Wayne Shepherd – Tab
- Key to the Highway – B.B. King – Tab
- Mean Old World – Duane Allman and Eric Clapton – Tab
- Everyday I Have the Blues – B.B. King – Tab
- Blues Deluxe – Joe Bonamassa – Tab
- The Sky Is Crying – Elmore James – Tab
- I Smell a Rat – Buddy Guy – Tab
- Have You Ever Loved a Woman? – Eric Clapton – Tab
- Cradle Rock – Rory Gallagher – Tab
- You Are My Sunshine – Mississippi Johnson Hurt – Tab
- So Many Roads – Joe Bonamassa – Tab
- Born in Chicago – Mike Bloomfield – Tab
- I Need Your Love So Bad- Fleetwood Mac – Tab
- Lie to Me – Johnny Lang – Tab
- Texas Flood – Stevie Ray Vaughan – Tab
- Sweet Sixteen – B.B. King – Tab
- The Messiah Will Come Again – Roy Buchanan – Tab
- What Kind of Woman Is This – Buddy Guy – Tab
- T-Bone Shuffle – T-Bone Walker – Tab
- 38-32-20 Blues – Johnny Winter – Tab
- Son House – Death Letter – Tab
- Texas Strut – Gary Moore – Tab
- Don’t Say You Love Me – Free – Tab
- Special Rider Blues – Son House – Tab
- Paris Texas – Ry Cooder – Tab
- When My Train Pulls In – Gary Clark Jr. – Tab
- Smokestack Lightning – Howlin’ Wolf – Tab
- Mean Town Blues – Johnny Winter – Tab
- It Hurts Me Too – Elmore James – Tab
- Freight Train Solo – Elizabeth Cotten – Tab
- All Your Love I Miss Lovin’ – Otis Rush – Tab
- Tuff Enuff – The Fabulous Thunderbirds – Tab
- Out of My Mind – John Mayer – Tab
- Call It Stormy Monday – T-Bone Walker – Tab
- 55th Street Boogie – Hound Dog Taylor – Tab
- Walking By Myself – Gary Moore – Tab
- Right Next Door – Robert Cray – Tab
- Ball and Biscuit – The White Stripes – Tab
- Blues Boy Tune – B.B. King – Tab
- Another Kinda Love – John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers – Tab
- Baby I Love You – Bonnie Raitt and B.B. King – Tab
- Time Makes Two – Robert Cray – Tab
- Blues Guitar – Lonnie Johnson – Tab
- Feelin’ Bad Blues – Ry Cooder – Tab
Learn the Top 60 Blues Guitar Solos – Pro-Recommended Riffs and Licks
Is Blues Guitar Hard to Learn?
Whenever I’m asked if a style of guitar music is hard to learn, my answer is typically the same:
Learning the guitar is easy; Mastering the guitar is hard.
Blues, in particular, is a genre where the basics can be learned in a day.
But mastering blues guitar is just as much about putting emotion into the music as it is about your technical skill. While some say it can be done in 1 month, I doubt B.B. King would tell you the same.
You have to learn to put expression and personality into your phrasing, explained really well here.
It takes deeply understanding the feel of the genre to rank among the best.
But in its simplest form, this style is just 3 blues chords and a 5-note scale.
Many blues songs use a 12-bar pattern made of the I, IV, and V chords.
Soloing over this 12-bar pattern is as simple as playing 5 notes called a pentatonic scale.
Now, this might sound like a foreign language to you, but it’s really not complicated.
In an upcoming post, we’ll tell you all you need to know about how to get started writing your own blues tunes using these chords and scales.
For now, be sure to review our beginner’s guide to soloing on the guitar to freshen up your knowledge.
Dust off your axe (or check out our recommendations for blues acoustics and electrics if you’re in the market for a new one), get stretched out, plugged in, and ready to jam.
Once your fingers are warmed up, here are my 60 favorite best blues guitar solos of all time.
Conclusion
This list covers it all: country blues, delta, blues rock, Chicago, and on and on.
You’ll find solos here to cover every key and nearly every technique on the planet.
So you can be sure as you’re making your way down the list, each solo you learn brings you one step closer to total guitar mastery.
