Rolf Wikström

Born in Sweden, Rolf Wikström ranks among the nation’s premier blues guitarists and has issued nearly twenty albums since launching his recording career in the mid-1970s. Far from the stereotypical bluesman, he stands tall and fair-haired, shaped by a middle-class upbringing that once included work as an economist, yet his discography reveals a contrasting narrative. As a boy he borrowed an uncle’s guitar and copied solos broadcast on the radio, unaware until a visiting television repairman pointed it out that the instrument had remained completely untuned. After correcting his technique he acquired his first guitar, a Fenton Vail, at fourteen and amplified it through a battery-powered radio. In his late teens he entered a Stockholm blues ensemble whose prodigious drinking reputedly put an end to the long-standing Swedish custom of providing gratis beer to bar bands. Taking a cue from Jimmy Page, Wikström fitted his guitar with lighter banjo strings to achieve a singular tone and began issuing solo work in 1975 with the album Sjung Svenska Folk (Sing Swedes!). Over time he expanded beyond stark, elemental blues into ballads and jazz-tinged passages. Within Sweden, where audiences have long welcomed accomplished blues, he has sustained a thriving livelihood, although his renown has traveled only modestly beyond national borders, limited to scattered followers in mainland Europe and the United States. That limitation does not trouble him; he continues to perform live whenever possible, frequently opening for touring figures such as Charles Brown and Albert Collins.