T-Bone Walker Birthplace — Linden, Texas

T-Bone Walker — Aaron Thibeaux Walker — was born on May 28, 1910, in Linden, Texas, and is the father of electric blues guitar — the musician who took the instrument electric and invented the vocabulary that B.B. King, Freddie King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, and every subsequent electric blues guitarist would inherit. His recordings from the mid-1940s — 'Call It Stormy Monday,' 'T-Bone Shuffle,' 'Mean Old World' — established the template: a clean amplified tone, fluid single-note lines, behind-the-beat phrasing, and a performance style that included playing the guitar behind his head and with his teeth, techniques Jimi Hendrix later adopted.

Walker grew up in Dallas and was a childhood friend of Blind Lemon Jefferson, whom he guided around the streets for tips as a young boy. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1930s, where the Black entertainment circuit on Central Avenue gave him the audience and the commercial infrastructure for his recordings. His influence radiated outward through every guitarist who heard him: King, Clapton, Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan — the line of descent is direct and acknowledged.

Linden, in Cass County in east Texas, is a small town with historical connections to several significant figures — Scott Joplin is also associated with the area. A Texas historical marker acknowledges Walker's birth in Linden. He died in Los Angeles in 1975. The Dallas blues scene where he developed — the Deep Ellum neighbourhood — is the more musically significant geography of his early career.