The most significant member in the Blues Blowers band was Eddy Lang (nee Salvatore Massaro) who was the father of the jazz guitar. He developed it further than anyone else at the time. He also played plectrum banjo. He died very young but his influence on jazz guitar was profound upon Django (Venuti and Lang predated Django and Grapelli) and many guitarists that followed. Charlie Christian changed the form with electric lead style jazz guitar but other acoustic jazz players were Dick McDonough and Karl Kress, the latter who tuned his guitar Bb,F,C,G,D,B. The bottom strings are in fifths and the top four are tuned liked the plectrum banjo. The contemporary exponent of this tuning on acoustic jazz guitar in the Kress mode is Marty Grosz, the son of George Grosz, the artist. Marty works without a pickup but goes through his amp with a good mic.

Allen Ruess with Benny Goodman is also a fine acoustic jazz guitarist.

Eddie Condon played tenor guitar tuned like a plectrum banjo, CGBD, not in the guitar-tuned so-called Chicago tuning.

The tenor banjo (called originally the tango banjo based on the 1915 tango craze in the U.S.) was accessible to string players who wanted to play jazz. The tenor banjo is tuned in fifths as is violin, viola, cello.

Johnny St. Cyr of course played the guitar-banjo in rhythm with Lil Hardin in the Hot Five and Hot Seven with Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory and "King" Oliver. Django's first instrument was the guitar-banjo used for playing French dance music called "Musettes". Django might have been influenced by St. Cyr. After the caravan fire in which Django was injured, he switched to guitar and changed acoustic guitar forever.
He also learned a lot from Eddy Lang and was friends with his contemporary and equal player, Argentinian, Oscar Aleman.

The Mound City group found that, because they were a small string group suitable for dinner parties and intimate gatherings, they could find work during hard times when the horn bands were not economically viable.