Recently, my friend
Jim Campilongo sent me an e-mail about the 100 Top Guitarists – inspired, I think, by a list he read in Rolling Stone. Jim made his own list and forwarded it to me and a few other guitar friends, with the idea to get a definitive list together: The 100 Most Influential Players of the Past 100 Years. The list bounced around between us for a week or so, with lots of cheers and jeers. We never really did seal it up tight, but we had fun. Would've been more fun if we'd actually been all together in a bar, raising toasts to our favorite players and favorite moments in recorded guitar history. Alas, it was all done via e-mail – fueled, for the most part, by coffee rather than beer. Ah well. That's modern times for ya.
All the ballyhoo got me thinking about the guitarists who have influenced, inspired, delighted, and terrified me since I began playing – about 30 years ago. This was the final e-mail I sent to our little group of guitar geeks. I've decided to share it here just for fun. Enjoy.
~Adam
Top 10 players I dug while still in my teens:
1. Ted Greene (I studied with him for a few years in my late teens, early 20s)
2. Jimmy Wyble (I studied with him, briefly -- his album Etudes is a stunner)
3. The Beatles (particularly Let It Be and The Beatles)
4. Joe Pass (Virtuoso)
5. Larry Carlton (his work with the Crusaders)
6. Chuck Berry ("Johnny B. Goode" and "Roll Over Beethoven")
7. Eric Clapton (Disraeli Gears, which I got as a bar mitzvah present)
8. Steve Morse (the first Dixie Dregs record -- he was the first "chops" guy I dug)
9. Jeff Beck (Blow by Blow -- Beck can make the guitar speak in tongues)
10. Les Paul (his classic Capitol recordings with Mary Ford)
P.S. Special mention must be made for the great guitar solos on the opening-credits music from the TV shows "Rockford Files" and "Barney Miller."
P.P.S. Special mention must be made for the solo on Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock," which I listened to over and over. Who was that guy?
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Top 10 players I heard after I'd already been at it a while, who made me rethink something (or everything) about guitar:
1. Steve Cropper (got into him in my early 20s, playing in an old-school r&b band -- "Hip Hug Her" still slays me)
2. John Scofield (his acoustic guitar trio record w/ Joe Beck and Larry Coryell was a *heavy* one for me)
3. Chris Whitley (a friend dragged me to see him, solo, at Bottom of the Hill years ago -- brutal and vulnerable)
4. Marc Ribot (mostly his work w/ Waits, but also his own Rootless Cosmopolitans)
5. David Tronzo (first with Spanish Fly, then on assorted NYC gigs when I moved here in the mid '90s)
6. Ben Monder (first on Marc Johnson's Right Brain Patrol, then assorted NYC gigs when I moved here)
7. Bill Frisell (saw him in L.A. in '89 with his quartet -- altogether freaked me out)
8. Nels Cline (Ground, and many great gigs & albums since)
9. Tuck Andress (those first couple of Tuck & Patti records -- I was playing a lot of duo gigs with singers back then)
10. Neil Young (I was a late bloomer on Neil -- he is revolutionary and primitive at the same time)
* P.S. Noël Akchoté is an avant-jazz marvel. Do you know him?
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Top 10 players I enjoy listening to today:
1. Bill Sims Jr
2. Kevin Breit
3. Mark Orton
4. Jason Crigler
5. Ry Cooder (yes, still!)
6. Daniel Lanois
7. David Lindley
8. Ana Egge
9. Doyle Bramhall II
10. Jim Campilongo
* P.S. I'm also a fan of Gerry Leonard -- his Spooky Ghost CD in particular -- tho' have not heard him much lately.
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Top 10 players that people at gigs tell me I sound like, but whose playing I know almost nothing of:
1. Jerry Garcia
2. Jerry Garcia
3. Jerry Garcia
4. Jerry Garcia
5. Jerry Garcia
6. Jerry Garcia
7. Jerry Garcia
8. Jerry Garcia
9. Jerry Garcia
10. Amos Garrett
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I'm not sure how, but Django Reinhardt eluded all of my categories. I love everything about his music, and have surely stolen a few of his lines. (The slower ones.)