List of Delta blues musicians

A

• Woodrow Adams. Singer, guitarist and harmonica player who recorded three singles.
• Cecil Augusta. Singer and guitarist who recorded one song for Alan Lomax in 1959.

B

• Kid Bailey. Recorded one known session, in 1929.
• Tommy Bankhead. Guitarist and singer who backed other musicians, including Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson I, and released a few albums under his own name.
• John Henry Barbee. Guitarist and singer, an exponent of early country blues and Delta blues, who early in his career performed with Sunnyland Slim.
• Robert Belfour. Country blues and Delta blues guitarist and singer, collaborator with Mose Vinson; started recording late in his career, beginning in the 1990s.
• Houston Boines. Singer and harmonica player, Boines accompanied by guitarist Charley Booker, was recruited by talent scout Ike Turner to record for Modern Records in 1952. He also recorded for Sun Records in 1953.
• Charley Booker. Singer and guitarist, mostly active around Leland and Greenville, Mississippi, in the 1940s and early 1950s.
• Ishmon Bracey. Early country blues and Delta blues guitarist and vocalist.
• Willie Brown. Guitarist, singer and songwriter.
• R. L. Burnside. Acoustic and electric Mississippi hill country blues, Delta blues, and juke joint blues guitarist and singer.

C

• Sam Carr. Drummer best known as a member of the Jelly Roll Kings.
• Bo Carter. Country blues singer and multi-instrumentalist who performed mostly early Delta blues, playing guitar, banjo, string bass and clarinet, one of the first dirty blues musicians, with songs such as "Banana in Your Fruit Basket".
• James Cotton. Harmonica blues player and singer who began as a Delta blues musician and later moved to Chicago and began playing Chicago blues in acoustic and electric settings.
• Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. Guitarist and singer who began as a Delta blues musician and later moved to Chicago, where he played Delta blues and Chicago blues in acoustic and electric settings.

D

• CeDell Davis. Blues guitarist and singer, with a distinctive style of guitar playing due to his infirmity. Davis played guitar using a butter knife in his fretting hand.
• Walter Davis. Blues singer, pianist, and songwriter who was one of the most prolific blues recording artists from the early 1930s to the early 1950s.
• Mattie Delaney. Singer and guitarist active in the 1930s. Only two recordings by her are known: "Down the Big Road Blues" and "Tallahatchie River Blues".
• Delta Blind Billy As a traveling bluesman in Mississippi, he performed with his contemporaries Arthur Crudup and Papa Charlie McCoy. He is known for recording songs about being an outlaw, despite being legally blind.

E

• David "Honeyboy" Edwards. Grammy Award–winning guitarist and singer; at the time of his death he may have been the last living Delta blues player of the twentieth century.
• Robert "Big Mojo" Elem. An electric bass guitarist raised in the Delta, Elem relocated to Chicago in 1948. He was noted as a "born entertainer whose joking and acting on stage appealed to club audiences".

F

• T-Model Ford. His musical style combined the rawness of Delta blues with Chicago and juke joint blues styles.
• Frank Frost. Frost was one of the foremost Delta blues harmonica players of his generation.

G

• Boyd Gilmore. Delta blues singer, guitarist and songwriter. Among the songs he wrote were "All in My Dreams", "Believe I'll Settle Down", "I Love My Little Woman" and "If That's Your Girl". Gilmore also recorded a version of fellow Delta bluesman Robert Johnson's track, "Ramblin' on My Mind".

H

• W. C. Handy. A composer and musician who referred to himself as the 'Father of the Blues'. He was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States.
• Richard "Hacksaw" Harney. Guitarist and pianist.
• Jessie Mae Hemphill . An electric guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist also specializing in the North Mississippi hill country blues traditions of her family and regional heritage.
• Sid Hemphill. A multi-instrumentalist and bandleader who played in his own string band mainly in Mississippi.
• King Solomon Hill. Singer and guitarist who recorded a handful of songs in 1932.
• Rosa Lee Hill. Guitarist and singer.
• Jimmy "Duck" Holmes. Blues musician and proprietor of the Blue Front Cafe on the Mississippi Blues Trail, the oldest surviving juke joint in Mississippi.
• John Lee Hooker. Acoustic and electric guitarist and singer, one of the best-known exponents of Delta blues, who also played Detroit blues.
• Son House. Singer and guitarist.
• Howlin' Wolf. Chicago blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player.
• Mississippi John Hurt. Delta and country blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist.

J

• Elmore James. Slide guitarist, playing acoustic and electric guitars, and singer, who performed Delta blues and Chicago blues and is best known for the latter; his technique influenced a generation of guitarists that followed.
• Skip James. Singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter.
• Big Jack Johnson. Electric blues musician, one of a very small number of blues musicians to play the mandolin.
• Louise Johnson. Singer and pianist.
• Robert Johnson. Singer-songwriter and guitarist, recognized since the 1960s as a master of Delta blues and an important influence on many rock musicians.
• Tommy Johnson. Guitarist, singer-songwriter.

K

• Junior Kimbrough. Acoustic and electric guitarist and singer of North Mississippi hill country blues, Delta blues and juke joint blues.
• B. B. King. Blues guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer. From his Delta blues beginnings, King introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending, shimmering vibrato, and staccato picking that influenced many later electric guitar blues players.
• Little Freddie King. Guitarist. He appears in the 2015 documentary film I Am the Blues.

L

• Robert Lockwood Jr.. Guitarist who learned to play directly from Robert Johnson and is known for his longtime collaboration with Sonny Boy Williamson II and his work in the mid-1950s with Little Walter.
• Willie Lofton. Singer and guitarist.
• Willie Love. Pianist.

M

• Tommy McClennan. Singer and guitarist.
• Kansas Joe McCoy. Singer, musician and songwriter.
• Papa Charlie McCoy. Guitarist, mandolinist, and singer, one of the major blues accompanists of his time.
• Prince McCoy. Violinist, latterly acknowledged as a pioneer and with a Mississippi Blues Trail marker located in Greenville.
• Hayes McMullan . Singer, guitarist and songwriter. He also was variously employed as a sharecropper, deacon and was a civil rights activist.
• Mississippi John Hurt. Known for his syncopated fingerpicking style. Recorded by the Library of Congress late in his life.
• Mississippi Matilda. Singer-songwriter who recorded four songs for Bluebird Records in 1936. Wife of Sonny Boy Nelson from 1935 to 1952.
• Muddy Waters. Slide guitarist and singer who began his career playing Delta blues but is best known as a Chicago blues musician, one of the more recognizable names in blues.

N

• Sonny Boy Nelson. Multi-instrumentalist, playing the banjo, guitar, harmonica, horn, mandolin and violin.

O

• Jack Owens. Singer and guitarist.

P

• Bertha Lee Pate better known as Bertha Lee. Singer. Recorded with, and was the common-law wife of, Charley Patton.
• Charley Patton. Guitarist, slide guitarist and singer, considered by many to be the "father of the Delta blues" is credited with creating an enduring body of American music and personally inspiring just about every Delta bluesman.
• Pinetop Perkins. Pianist who played with some of the most influential blues and rock and roll performers in American history.
• Robert Petway. Singer and guitarist who recorded only 16 songs, but was an influence on many notable blues and rock musicians.

R

• Andy Rodgers. Harmonicist, guitarist, singer-songwriter. A flamboyant character, known commonly as the "Midnight Cowboy", Rodgers worked part-time as a musician for most of his lifetime, finally recording two albums in the 1990s.
• Doctor Ross. Harmonica player, guitarist and singer of country blues, Delta blues, Detroit blues and juke joint blues.

S

• Johnny Shines. Singer and guitarist.
• J.D. Short. Singer, guitarist and harmonica player.
• Henry "Son" Sims. Fiddler and songwriter, best known as an accompanist for Charley Patton and the young Muddy Waters.
• Sunnyland Slim. Blues pianist born in the Mississippi Delta and moved to Chicago, helping to make that city a center of postwar blues.
• Henry Sloan. One of the earliest figures in the history of Delta blues. Very little is known for certain about his life, other than that he tutored Charlie Patton in the ways of the blues
• Freddie Spruell. Singer and guitarist, generally regarded as the first Delta bluesman to be recorded.
• Houston Stackhouse. Guitarist and singer best known for his association with Robert Nighthawk.

T

• Johnny Temple. Guitarist and singer.
• James Thomas Blues guitarist and singer, Thomas was variously a gravedigger and clay sculptor. Thomas's clay skulls are on display in the Delta Blues Museum, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and the Highway 61 Blues Museum, in Leland, Mississippi.
• Shardé Thomas. A fife player in the vanishing American fife and drum blues tradition.

U

• L. C. Ulmer. Singer-songwriter and one-man band, playing up to 12 musical instruments at one time.

V

• Mose Vinson. A boogie-woogie, blues and jazz pianist and singer, Vinson recorded at Sun Studios with James Cotton on "Cotton Crop Blues".

W

• Bukka White. Guitarist and singer.
• Geeshie Wiley. Singer and guitarist who recorded six songs in 1930 and 1931.
• Big Joe Williams. Guitarist, singer-songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar.
• Sonny Boy Williamson II. Early and influential harmonica stylist who recorded in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Johnny Woods. A blues singer and harmonica player in the north Mississippi hill country blues style.

Z

• Ike Zimmerman. A Delta-based musician, who is now known to have been Robert Johnson's main guitar teacher.