I am curious as to who everyone would rate as the top 5 all time guitar players. I would guess you would have to consider Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Jimmy Paige of Led Zeppelin fame. How about Eddie Van Halen of the group Van Halen, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, or Keith Richards of the Stones? Let me know your choices.

You should qualify that by saying best ROCK guitarists. Otherwise you would have to include guys like Django Reinhart, Wes Montgomery, Robert Johnson and many others who are not in the rock genre before all of the guys you mentioned. Now if you said "most popular", that's different. Then those guys would be in that group for sure.

Ok let us say the guitar players I mentioned are rock. Who would you consider to be the top blues or jazz players? You mentioned Django Reinhart and Wes Montgomery who would be jazz and Robert Johnson who would be blues. Who else?

Some of the blues guitarists would have to include Buddy Guy, Freddie King, B.B. King, Albert King, Roy Buchanan, Ron Thompson and others I can't recall at this moment.

This post has been edited by wep896: Aug 8 2005, 09:03 PM

A few other guitar players include Albert Collins, Luther Allison and Elmore James. I am not an expert on guitar playing (I don't even play guitar) so I guess you may classify the folks I have mentioned more as favorites.

I've always found a question such as this to be quite a dilemma due to the subjective nature of responses as to who is the "best" at anything. As mentioned above "popular" is somewhat measureable be it through sales or opinion polls. Personally, I admire and respect anyone who has taken the time to learn and keep on learning to play any instrument be it guitar or whatever. I've been playing guitar for more than 40 years and I am not qualified to say who is the "best" as it's a sujective superlative. There's been a lot of guitarists whom I enjoy listening to or seeing live over the years...I prefer not to make comparisons as they are all superb musicians. Some are better showman than others, but in the long run if you enjoy the music that's all that really matters in my view.

Have fun and enjoy the voyage!

flat_fifth

This post has been edited by flat_fifth: Dec 1 2005, 11:12 AM

As far as rock, I would add in Steve Howe.
Jazz John - McLaughlin, Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, Grant Green.

I'm not as familiar with blues guitarists other than the ones already mentioned.

I'm gonna restrict my selections to folks still out there right now.
Blues
Lurrie Bell
Anson Funderburgh
Magic Slim
Junior Watson
Ronnie Earl

Jazz
Pat Martino
John Scofield
Charlie Hunter
Pat Metheny
Larry Coryell

Rock
Derek Trucks
Steve Kimock
Richard Thompson
Warren Haynes
Jimmy Herring


With a gun to my head to pick 5 out of the entire group...
Bell, Martino, Trucks, Watson & Hunter

This post has been edited by Bill Halaszynski: Feb 5 2006, 12:29 AM

Here's my opinion of the top 5 for what it's worth..
Also some video links, courtesy of You tube..

Joe Pass:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bv06qoEE4s...arch=joe%20pass

Johnny Winter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8siLZ4zNbY...Johnny%20Winter

Tal Farlow: (Also where I get my user name from)..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0-319pnVm0...ch=Tal%20farlow

Wes Montgomery:..
Sorry no vids available.. Removed for copyright reasons.. Damn.

Andres' Segovia...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9efHwnFAkuA...;search=segovia

See Ya,
Tal..
http://www.soundclick.com/rollandharrison

Too many categories to limit to just 5 overall...so mine are:

Slayers
Hubert Sumlin, Albert King, Otis Rush, T-Bone Walker and Hendrix

Soul-Stirrers
John Lee Hooker, Son House, J. B. Lenoir and Lightnin' Hopkins

Honorable Mentions
Tab Benoit, Big Joe Williams and Duke Robillard

I couldn't agree more.