52 Guitars
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Allan Holdsworth Holdsworth follows Eric Johnson for one simple and musically irrelevant reason: I also heard him first on one of those thin floppy plastic recordings included in an issue of Guitar Player. Unlike Johnson, his recording didn't capture my attention. He seems to mainly work in jazz-rock fusion, which is not a genre that appeals…
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Eric Johnson As a perenially failing guitarist, I have occasionally over the years read Guitar Player magazine. I even subscribed to it for a few years in the mid-1990s or so, though I was always a little uneasy in doing so, as if one day I might get a letter saying "Inasmuch as our magazine is…
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Davy Graham You knew he would be next, didn't you? Well, no, I guess you didn't, but if you're familiar with British folky guitar players, you've probably heard of him. He's not that well known outside of that world, but he's very highly regarded within it, and is said to have been a big influence…
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John Renbourn Renbourn's name is associated with Bert Jansch's, not only because they worked together in Pentangle but because they were basically doing very similar things. Their voices even sound somewhat similar. Also, as with Jansch, I had a little trouble finding YouTube videos that emphasized his guitar work. This is in part because he…
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Bert Jansch It hasn't been very long (by my standard) since I wrote about Bert Jansch on the occasion of his death. That was less than three years ago, and I don't have a lot to add to it in the way of commentary, so please read it if you're interested. There are also a…
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Richard Thompson When I decided to do this series I immediately started a list of people I wanted to include, and I got up to about thirty or so entries about as fast as I could type. Richard Thompson's name was among them. But I've actually been sort of dreading the post on him–not because…
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Blind Willie Johnson "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" (I'll have a bit more to say about this and about the artist in a day or two, but since today is Holy Saturday I want it to stand alone for now.)
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Michael Hedges Here is the third (not in any significant order) of the Windham Hill guitarists who attracted so much attention (well, relatively speaking) in the late '70s and early '80s. I can't say he is my favorite, but he's pretty spectacular from the technical point of view. Breakfast in the Field and Aerial Boundaries…
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William Ackerman The founder of Windham Hill and one of its best-known artists, Ackerman's guitar style is less complex than Alex de Grassi's (see guitarist #13 from last week), or Michael Hedges's (next week). But he has, at least on his early albums, a gift for sweet, wistful, memorable melodies. Both these pieces are from his…
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Alex de Grassi. The term "New Age music" has long since become somewhat pejorative outside of the quasi-religious circles which supplied its name. But there was some very good music that more or less fit that category. There were three guitarists who appeared on the Windham Hill label (more or less synonymous with New Age) …
Light On Dark Water 