Guitarist

Alex Lifeson, OC (born August 27, 1953), is a Canadian musician, known as the guitarist for the rock group Rush. Lifeson founded Rush in the summer of 1968, and has been an integral member of the three-piece band ever since. For Rush, Lifeson plays electric and acoustic guitars as well as other stringed instruments such as mandola, mandolin and bouzouki. He also performs backing vocals in live performances, and occasionally plays keyboards and bass pedal synthesizers. During live performances,...

Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE (born 30 March 1945), nicknamed Slowhand, is a 18 time Grammy Award-winning English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter and composer. He is one of the most successful musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, garnering an unprecedented three inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (The Yardbirds, Cream, and solo). Often viewed by critics and fans alike as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, Clapton was ranked fourth in Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the...

George Benson (b. March 22 1943, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American musician, whose recording career began at the age of twenty-one as a jazz guitarist. He is however, better known to the public at large as a Pop and R&B; singer, famous for such hits as "Give Me The Night", "Lady Love Me (One More Time)", "Turn Your Love Around", "In Your Eyes" and "This Masquerade", among others. Benson's style is that of a true jazz player finding popularity in pop without "selling out." He is known...

Joe Pass (born Joseph Anthony Passalaqua, January 13, 1929, New Brunswick, New Jersey, U.S., died May 23, 1994, Los Angeles, California) was a jazz guitarist. His extensive use of walking basslines, melodic counterpoint during improvisation, and use of a chord-melody style of play opened up new possibilities for jazz guitar and had a profound influence on future guitarists. Joe Pass, the son of Mariano Passalacqua, a Sicilian-born steel mill worker, was raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Born...

Robert Fripp (born 16 May 1946 in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England) is a guitarist, composer and a record producer, perhaps best known for being the guitarist for, and only constant member of, the progressive rock band King Crimson. His work, spanning five decades, encompasses a variety of musical styles. He is married to Toyah Willcox. Fripp was ranked 42nd on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" (published August 2003). Fripp's earliest professional...

Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (March 21 1902 – October 19 1988) was an American blues singer and guitarist. House pioneered an innovative style featuring strong, repetitive rhythms, often played with the aid of slide guitar, and his singing often incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual (music). He was an important influence on Muddy Waters and also on Robert Johnson, who would later take this style of music to new levels. A seminal Delta blues figure, House remains influential...

Lindsey Adams Buckingham (born October 3, 1949) is an American guitarist and singer with the musical group Fleetwood Mac. During his career he has also done some independent recording since he first became a member of that group. He is married to photographer Kristen Messner and has three children. As a member of Fleetwood Mac, he was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Born in Palo Alto, California, Buckingham was the third and youngest son of Rutheda (née Elliott) and...

Stanley Jordan (July 31, 1959) is an American jazz/jazz fusion guitarist, best known for his development of the touch technique for playing guitar. He was born in Chicago, Illinois. He received a B.A. in music from Princeton University in 1981. From the moment he made his debut in 1985 with the gold-selling album Magic Touch, guitarvirtuodo Stanley Jordan has proven himself as a forward thinking innovator. With his nimly executed "touch" or "tap" technique, he ushered a dazzling and...

Lester Raymond Flatt (June 19, 1914 - May 11, 1979) was one of the pioneers of bluegrass music. Flatt was born in Overton County, Tennessee to Nannie Mae Haney and Isaac Columbus Flatt. A singer and guitarist, he first came to prominence as a member of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in the 1940s. In 1948 he started a band with fellow Monroe alumnus Earl Scruggs, and for the next twenty years Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys were one of the most successful bands in bluegrass. When...

Thomas Earl "Tom" Petty (born October 20, 1950) is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist who was a member of the Traveling Wilburys. His hit singles have included "Don't Do Me Like That", "Refugee", "Runnin' Down a Dream", "The Waiting", "Don't Come Around Here No More", "I Won't Back Down", "Free Fallin'", "Mary Jane's Last Dance", "American Girl", "Learning to Fly" and "You Don't Know How It Feels", most of which remain heavily played on adult contemporary and classic rock radio. Petty is also...

Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995) was a musician, songwriter, artist, and lead guitar and vocalist of the psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead. Though he vehemently disavowed the role, Garcia was viewed by many as the leader or "spokesman" of the group. One of the original founders of the Grateful Dead, Garcia performed with the Dead for its entire three-decade career (which spanned from 1965 to 1995); and also founded and participated in a variety of side...

Philip Tyler Keaggy (born March 23, 1951 in Youngstown, Ohio) is an American acoustic and electric guitar and vocalist who has released more than 50 albums and contributed to many more recordings in both the contemporary Christian music and mainstream markets. He is a seven-time recipient of the GMA Dove Award for Instrumental Album of the Year, and was twice nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Gospel Album. Keaggy was raised in a small farmhouse in Hubbard, Ohio with nine brothers and...

Geoffrey Arnold ("Jeff") Beck (born June 24, 1944 to Arnold and Ethel Beck in Wallington, Greater London) is an English rock guitarist. He was one of the three noted guitarists the others being Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page to have recorded with the band The Yardbirds. He was ranked the 14th on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." Beck has never attained the sustained commercial success of his fellow Yardbirds guitarists, though the band, along with Beck,...

Clarence Eugene "Fuzzy" Haskins (born June 8, 1941) is a former singer with 1950s and 1960s doo-wop group, The Parliaments. He is a founding member of the groundbreaking and influential 1970s funk bands Parliament and Funkadelic, later known just as Parliament-Funkadelic. He left Parliament-Funkadelic in the later half of the 1970s to pursue a solo career. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Haskins, born in Elkhorn, West Virginia, was a singer with The Parliaments, a...