Most Well Known Guitarists of All Times

Blogging has allowed me to explore deeper into the world of acoustic and classical guitar. Today, as I was pondering upon the topic for the blog, I decided that finding the most acknowledged guiatrists would be an interesting one. I carried out some research in the Internet to make my entry into a more accurate, and fun-packed one. To point out the obvious, there are countlessly many talented guitarists across the world. But I decided to opt out only five. 

Tommy Emmanuel

From Australia, Tommy Emmanuel is the most famous for his unique finger-stlye performance. He is not only a famous acoustic guitarist, he is also a skilled drummer and a vocalist. He started to play guitar at the age of four, for which he was called the Child Guitar Prodigy. His family was closely linked to the musical background, and Emmanuel started playing in public in his own family band. His debut followed shortly in the 1970's. The following two decades, 1970's and 1980's, were the time in his career in which he was actively involved with session activities. His first own solo album, From Out Of Nowhere, was released in 1979, that made his name known to the world.

Tommy has said that even at a young age he was fascinated by Atkins’ musical style – sometimes referred to as Travis Picking– of playing bass with the thumb and melody parts with the first two or three fingers at the same time. This technique became the basis of Tommy's guitar style.

While Tommy has never had formal music training, his playing ability has won him fans from all over the world. He is known to play percussion parts on the body of his guitar. As a solo performer he never plays to a set list and uses a minimum of effects.He usually completes recordings in one take.

He frequently uses his left thumb to fret bass notes on the 5th and 6th strings as well as playing chords such as Am and E with just two fingers. He uses a thumb pick mostly, a flat pick or just fingers.

Tommy Emmanuel's guitar is Maton EBG808, and it is shown in the picture below. 

 

Paco De Lucía

Born Francisco Sánchez Gómez, (1947) Paco De Lucia is a Spanish composer and guitarist. Recognized as a virtuoso flamenco guitarist all over the world, he is a leading proponent of the Modern Flamenco style, and is one of the very few flamenco guitarists who has also successfully crossed over into other genres of music: he enjoys, and has been successful in, styles such as classical and jazz.

Like Tommy Emmanuel, he started playing guitar at the age of six. His family was closely related with music, especially with the flamenco. Lucia went to the United States in order to enlarge his musical career. There, he suggested to an English jazz guitarist, John McLaughlin, to create a guitar trio out of three guitarists. The third member of this trio was Al Di Meola, another jazz gutiarist from the United States.

In Decemeber 1980, the guitar trio performed in thier own concert, 'Friday Night in San Francisco', which was remarkably fantastic and received a tremendous amount of positive feedbacks. This concert is remembered as an important event in the history of acoustic music, the passionate flamengo style was added to jazz songs, usually sentimental and flows smooth in general.

Eric Clapton

Clapton was born in Ripley Surey England on March 3 1945. He was raised by his grandmother after he mother just moved to Canada. His first band in 1961 was the Roosters. In 1963 he joined The Yardbirds. He played in a couple of other bands before he formed Cream in 1966. He was by this time considered one of the top guitar players in England, but was virtually unknown in America. In just 2 years, Cream was a huge success in Europe and the U.S. In 1968 Cream broke up. He then played with Blind Faith and did several gigs with Dr. John, Jeff Beck, Leon Russel, and Stephen Stills.

He released his first solo album in 1969. In 1970 he joined Derek and the Domino's. He wrote the song Layla after falling in love with George Harrison's wife Patty Boyd. 1970 and 1971 were hard years for Clapton. He lost 2 good friends, Hendrix, and Duane Allman. That combined with the attraction to Patty Boyd and not being able to be with her, drove him to drugs and alcohol.

Pete Townsend helped him get back on his feet. He finally did get together with Patty in 1979 and married her. They were married until 1984. Since then he has played with every big name guitar player in the music business and has had great success. He is also considered by many to be the best guitar player ever.

B.B King

Jimi Hendrix



Jimi Hendrix's Portrait, made out of 5000 guitar picks.

Born in November 27, 1942, Washington, United States, Jimi Hendrix has bought his first guitarat five dollars and started learning to play guitar in 1958. In 1958, his mother passed away and he found that playing guitar helped him to overcome and soothe the sadness. 

 

He learned guitar by himself and he made his debut in the regional band named Rhythm and Blues, that went for a cross-continental American tour from 1962 to 1965.