Ongoing History Daily: Who invented the power chord?

There are few sounds more satisfying than a power chord on an electric guitar run through a big amplifier and a distortion pedal. Power chords—which are usually stripped-down versions of a traditional chord consisting of the root note and its fifth—are essential to rock’n’roll.

They’re so simple to play, too. Place one finger across two or three adjacent strings on the fretboard and voila! You’re a guitar god. But who was the first person to come up with such a thing?

It might be Link Wray, who played his electric through a damaged amplifier for the 1958 instrumental hit, “Rumble.” But suppose you really want to be pedantic about it. In that case, we might consider Heitor Villa-Lobas, a Brazilian composer who played what could be argued was a power chord on an acoustic guitar in a composition called “Preludes.” That was December 11, 1942.