52 Guitars
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Andrés Segovia I wanted to close out this series with a really important guitarist, and it would be hard to find a more suitable candidate than Segovia, who did so much to bring the guitar into the mainstream of classical music. In a career that spanned the greater part of the 20th century, he advanced the repertoire…
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Mississippi Fred McDowell I wish I could say that when I was growing up in rural Alabama I heard this kind of music alive in its native culture. But I didn't; I heard it on records in the living room of an aunt and uncle who had a great interest, very unusual for white people…
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John McLaughlin McLaughlin is very well known in jazz circles, but I've never really listened to him very much. I heard him back in 1970 or so when he appeared on Miles Davis's Bitches Brew, which I did not really get then and still don't, although it's considered a masterpiece by many. But as with…
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Frank Zappa I want to say more or less the same thing about Frank Zappa now that I did in a 2007 review of Hot Rats, so I may as well not bother rephrasing it, and just quote: I must say right off that I had never taken very seriously Zappa’s ambition to be taken…
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Yngwie Malmsteen Yngwie (ING-vay) is arguably the very fastest guitar player in the world. Which certainly doesn't mean he's the best musician; I have to say that to my taste, a little of this goes a long way. But dang…. "Black Star": Many minds were boggled, I understand, when his album Rising Force was released…
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Glenn Phillips If there is anyone reading this who has heard of Glenn Phillips, I'd like to know. Without looking back over the whole list of people I've posted about this year, I feel pretty sure he is the least-known. I believe–again, without checking–that he's one of the two people I've featured whom I've seen…
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Vishwa Mohan Bhatt Just a country boy and his dobro: I didn't have in mind to venture away from standard guitar in this series. The other night I was watching the 2004 Crossroads concert, a guitar festival organized by Eric Clapton to benefit a drug treatment center he founded. It's two DVDs, four hours,…
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Gary Moore When Jack Bruce died a week or two ago, all the obituaries described him as "former Cream bassist." But Cream only existed for a couple of years, and Bruce had a very long and productive career afterwards, including several albums which are more interesting to me than Cream's stuff. He worked with a…
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Robert Fripp I hadn't planned to include Fripp in this series, although he is a very highly regarded player. Apart from his work with King Crimson, which doesn't necessarily offer that many examples of his playing apart from the band, I really haven't heard that much of him. But having Daniel Lanois and Michael Brook…
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Michael Brook After Daniel Lanois, Michael Brook naturally comes to mind. He's another guitarist whose strength is in colors and atmospheres rather than power and speed. And Lanois produced Brook's album Cobalt Blue, which is well known among both guitar and ambient music fans–I first heard it on the ambient radio program Music from the Hearts…
Light On Dark Water 