Firstly, to understand distortion we need to look at what’s happening sonically. Distortion is when something is changed, twisted or exaggerated to make something appear differently, thus musical distortion is the sound of an amplified instrument that is significantly altered, creating a fuzzy, overpowered sound after the original signal has been pushed to its limit.
The origins of distortion in guitar music are varied, with a lot of different claims around the first documented use. It’s widely accepted that the first uses of slight distortion were from the first guitar amplifiers available being pushed to their limits. Blues artists such as Elmore James, Buddy Guy tried to match the raw power of their vocal performances with similar styles when playing, and in the early 50’s the sound could be heard on tracks like ‘Maybellene’ by Chuck Berry - see below. Guitarist Link Wray also began to modify the valves in his amplifier and poke holes into the speaker cone to get similar sounds.
In 1961 Country artist Marty Robbins had a track called ‘Don’t Worry’. During recording of the track the bassist was plugged directly into the mixing desk, however there was a problem with the channel which caused it to distort and create an intense, distorted fuzz effect. There are similar stories of experimentation with distorted sounds, and in 1964 Ray Davies of The Kinks supposedly took a knitting needle or razorblade to the speaker cone and cut it to get that distorted sound!