10 Revolutionary Women Guitarists You Need to Know
Female artists who shaped the instrument, then and now
Many incredible women left a permanent mark with just six strings, and many more did so without ever getting the success or even the acknowledgment they deserve. For them, we hold up a few as a symbol of the many. For them, we pay tribute to the trailblazers, and the torchbearers, whose music continues to change the world—today, tomorrow, and beyond.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
The godmother of rock 'n' roll, Sister Rosetta Tharpe's commanding voice and smoldering guitar echo through history like a call to arms. Born in Arkansas in 1915, Tharpe came up, as many musicians did, through the church, but no altar was big enough to contain her prodigious talent and larger-than-life presence, with or without her signature Gibson SG Custom. "Strange Things Happening Every Day," her 1945 crossover hit, showcases how Tharpe brought the sublime into the mainstream.
Maybelle Carter
"Mother" Maybelle Carter is one of the most prominent figures in country music history. Member of the Original Carter Family and mother to Helen, Anita, and June, Maybelle pioneered a unique version of fingerstyle picking, the "Carter Scratch," which brings the acoustic guitar into the forefront as a lead and rhythm instrument simultaneously. Hear it in action on "Wildwood Flower," a Carter Family classic.
Elizabeth Cotten
Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten was a titan of the country blues and a central figure in the folk revival of the 1960s. Left-handed and self-taught, she played a right-handed guitar upside down, picking the bassline with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. This distinctive technique, now known as "Cotten picking," is featured on signature songs like "Freight Train," a standard covered by artists from Pete Seeger to The Quarrymen, an English skiffle group who would later adopt another name: The Beatles.
Memphis Minnie
A remarkably prolific artist, Memphis Minnie's tenure as the "Queen of the Blues" lasted for over three decades. She toured and recorded extensively, cutting roughly 200 songs—or "sides"—for prominent labels like Columbia, Okeh, Vocalion, and Bluebird. The poet Langston Hughes recalled that Minnie's voice was "hard and strong," and her guitar "a musical version of electric welders plus a rolling mill." You can hear it loud and proud in genre-defining standards like "Looking The World Over," "Black Rat Swing," and her most famous, "Me and My Chauffeur Blues."
Geeshie Wiley & Elvie Thomas
A country blues mystery, Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas were a package deal, and historians continue to speculate why. Were they lovers? Did Elvie kill Geeshie's husband, Thornton? Did Geeshie help? Is Elvie's name actually L.V., and did she really best the blues legend Sippie Wallace at a singing contest? Maybe. And maybe not. But they did record six sides for Paramount Records in 1930 and '31, and while fewer than ten copies of these records are known to exist, songs like "Last Kind Words Blues" and "Motherless Child Blues" stand as some of the finest performances in history.
Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt is a musician's musician. Weaned on folk and later making her mark in the blues, Raitt's music is like a river, earthy and elemental, pouring from some ancient source, down Appalachian hillsides and into the hollers to join up with the muddy Mississippi before washing through its delta into the Gulf of Mexico. As a vocalist, she is singular. As a songwriter, familiar as family. As a guitar player, peerless, wicked with the slide, born to take it out of the hands of men and never give it back. Listen to the effortless instrumental break on this 1991 single if you want "Something To Talk About."
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell the player will forever be overshadowed by Joni Mitchell the bard, but her immense talent as a musician remains visible to those who are willing to look. Incredibly sophisticated for the folk sphere, Mitchell's songwriting brings with it a complexity that was light-years beyond the languid, fragrant strums of her contemporaries in California's Canyon set. When many session guitarists didn't—or couldn't—rise to meet it, she'd handle it herself, laying leads over some of jazz music's most virtuosic and intellectual practitioners, like Jaco Pastorius, whose fretless bass is all over Mitchell's 1976 album Hejira.
Joan Jett
Who doesn't love rock 'n' roll, and there are few who more wholly exemplify it than Joan Jett. Jett co-founded the influential teenage rock band The Runaways when she was just 17, stopping off to produce The Germs' legendary (GI) before going out on her own, first as a solo artist, and later with long-time backing band The Blackhearts, kicking off a lifetime reign as the "Queen of Rock' n' Roll."
St. Vincent
Born Annie Clark, the artist St. Vincent is a contemporary heiress to the rock 'n' roll throne. Drawing on visionaries like David Bowie and collaborator David Byrne, St. Vincent weaves a stylized brand of art-rock all her own, her jarring, jagged electric guitar at the center of songs like "Pay Your Way In Pain" and "Los Angeles," shooting like a current through intertwined arrangements of sputtering synthesizers and programmed percussion.
H.E.R.
The youngest artist on this list, H.E.R. has accomplished more in her 23 years than most have in a lifetime. Born Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson, H.E.R. (or Having Everything Revealed) started playing the guitar at 7. At 14, her skills on the piano got her a contract with RCA Records. Fast-forward nine years and you can add a Grammy, a signature Fender (the first for a black female artist), Super Bowl LV, and the Judas and the Black Messiah soundtrack to the list. And she's only just begun.
