Power Chord - History

History

Power chords can be traced back to commercial recordings in the 1950s. Robert Palmer pointed to electric blues guitarists Willie Johnson and Pat Hare, both of whom played for Sun Records in the early 1950s, as the true originators of the power chord, citing as evidence Johnson's playing on Howlin' Wolf's "How Many More Years" (recorded 1951) and Hare's playing on James Cotton's "Cotton Crop Blues" (recorded 1954). Link Wray is often cited as the first mainstream musician to have introduced power chords, especially with his hit instrumental "Rumble" in 1958.

A later hit song built around power chords was "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks, released in 1964. This song's riffs exhibit fast power-chord changes:

The Who's guitarist, Peter Townshend, performed power chords with a theatrical windmill-strum, for example in "My Generation".

Early heavy rock bands such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple also helped to popularize power chords. Examples include Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water". On King Crimson's Red album, Robert Fripp thrashed with power chords. In the 1980s, The Cars song "You Might Think" a power chord was performed "by muting the strings and plucking the chord repeatedly."