Trying to find the 100 best guitarists

Narrowing down the list of folks who've played the guitar to the 100 best guitarists is, well, challenging. So many people have played the axe that it's nigh impossible to come up with a list of the "best." It's pretty darn hard to come up with a set of criteria, to boot!

So where do we start? How about with the dawn of the instrument's impact on the American music and cultural scene. We have to go back all the way to Robert Johnson, probably considered the first guitar hero. Does that earn him a spot on the list of the 100 best guitarists? In my mind it does - originality counts for a lot, and no one was more original than Robert Johnson.

He was one of the original Delta Bluesmen. The "Delta," of course, is the Mississippi River Delta, which empties out into the Gulf of Mexico after traveling through New Orleans. You could say the Big Easy is the spiritual home of blues and jazz music, and therefore the spiritual home of the guitar - at least as it's known in America.

The list of Delta Bluesmen that Johnson influenced could in itself be the list of the 100 best guitarists. Muddy Waters. BB King. Howlin' Wolf. Bo Diddley. And on and on and on.

What's great about that is you can see the influence that Johnson had still in evidence today. Muddy Waters was the favorite bluesman of Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, both members of the British Invasion (through the Yardbirds, the Jeff Beck group and, of course, Led Zeppelin) of the 1960s and both surefire members of the list of 100 best guitarists. Moving further down the road we have someone like Dave Grohl, an accomplished singer, songwriter, drummer and guitarist with Nirvana and Foo Fighters, who lists Jimmy Page as his biggest influence.

Does Grohl belong on the list of the 100 best guitarists? Probably not, but it's a matter of personal taste. What is important, though, is that you can draw a straight line from Johnson, to Waters, to Page, to Grohl - who's still making chart-topping music today.

Back several decades ago, Johnson was referred to as "the Grandaddy of Rock and Roll," and it was fitting since, generationally, Page, Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix et al would be his grandsons. Now he might better be referred to as "The Great Grandaddy of Rock and Roll." Either way, he's your starting point for figuring the 100 best guitarists of all time.

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