List: American jazz guitarists

by likeorhate

•  Alan Kay

  Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) is an American computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design, and for coining the phrase, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it. " He is the president of the Viewpoints Research Institute, and an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also on the advisory board of TTI/Vanguard.

  

  41.5%
  

  36.6%
  

  22.0%
  
•  Chet Atkins

  Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), better known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who created, along with Owen Bradley, the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well. His picking style, inspired by Merle Travis, Django Reinhardt, George Barnes and Les Paul, brought him admirers within and outside the country scene, both in the United States and internationally.

  

  35.1%
  

  29.7%
  

  35.1%
  
•  Frank Zappa

  Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, electronic, orchestral, and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.

  

  32.8%
  

  23.9%
  

  43.3%
  
•  George Benson

  George Benson (born March 22, 1943) is a Grammy Award-winning American musician, whose recording career began at the age of twenty-one as a jazz guitarist. He is also known as a pop, R&B, and scat singer. This one-time child prodigy topped the Billboard 200 in 1976 with the triple-platinum album, Breezin'. He was also a major live attraction in the UK during the 1980s. Benson uses a rest-stroke picking technique very similar to that of gypsy jazz players such as Django Reinhardt.

  

  28.3%
  

  31.7%
  

  40.0%
  
•  Joe Pass

  Joe Pass (born Joseph Anthony Passalacqua) January 13, 1929 – May 23, 1994) was a jazz guitarist. His extensive use of walking basslines, melodic counterpoint during improvisation, use of a chord-melody style of play and outstanding knowledge of chord progressions opened up new possibilities for jazz guitar and had a profound influence on future guitarists.

  

  37.1%
  

  20.0%
  

  42.9%
  
•  Stanley Jordan

  Stanley Jordan (July 31, 1959) is an American jazz/jazz fusion guitarist, best known for his development of the tapping technique for the guitar. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, and he received a BA in digital music composition from Princeton University in 1981, studying under computer-music composers Paul Lansky and Milton Babbitt. Stanley Jordan began his music career at age six, studying piano, then shifted his focus to guitar at age eleven. He later began playing in rock and soul bands.

  

  0.0%
  

  100.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Greg Howe

  Gregory "Greg" Howe (born December 8, 1963) is an American guitarist and composer. As an active musician for over twenty years, he has released nine studio albums in addition to collaborating with a wide variety of artists.

  

  50.0%
  

  50.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Les Paul

  Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009) — known as Les Paul — was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible". He is credited with many recording innovations, including overdubbing (also known as sound on sound), delay effects such as tape delay, phasing effects, and multitrack recording.

  

  0.0%
  

  33.3%
  

  66.7%
  
•  Charlie Christian

  Charles Henry "Charlie" Christian (July 29, 1916 – March 2, 1942) was an American swing and jazz guitarist. Christian was an important early performer on the electric guitar, and is cited as a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained national exposure as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra from August 1939 to June 1941.

  

  15.4%
  

  46.2%
  

  38.5%
  
•  Norah Jones

  Norah Jones (born March 30, 1979) is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, keyboardist, guitarist, and actress. She is the daughter of sitarist Ravi Shankar, and the half-sister of Anoushka Shankar. Her career began with her 2002 debut album Come Away with Me, an adult contemporary vocal jazz album with a soul/folk/country tinge, that received five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Best New Artist.

  

  14.3%
  

  14.3%
  

  71.4%
  
•  Eddie Lang

  Eddie Lang (October 25, 1902 – March 26, 1933) was an American jazz guitarist, regarded as the most important Chicago jazz guitarist and the Father of the Jazz Guitar. He played a Gibson L-4 and L-5 guitar, providing great influence for many guitarists, including Django Reinhardt.

  

  0.0%
  

  100.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  John Scofield

  John Scofield (born December 26, 1951 in Dayton, Ohio), often referred to as "Sco," is an American jazz guitarist and composer, who has played and collaborated with Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, Charles Mingus, Joey Defrancesco, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Pat Martino, Mavis Staples, Phil Lesh, Billy Cobham, Medeski Martin & Wood, George Duke, Jaco Pastorius, John Mayer, and many other important artists.

  

  0.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  100.0%
  
•  Wes Montgomery

  John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery (6 March 1923 - 15 June 1968) was an American jazz guitarist. He is generally considered one of the major jazz guitarists, emerging after such seminal figures as Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian and influencing countless others, including Pat Martino, George Benson, Emily Remler, Kenny Burrell and Pat Metheny.

  

  33.3%
  

  33.3%
  

  33.3%
  
•  Robben Ford

  Robben Ford is an American blues, jazz and rock guitarist.

  

  100.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Grant Green

  Grant Green (June 6, 1935 – January 31, 1979; some sources erroneously give the birth year as 1931) was a jazz guitarist and composer. Recording prolifically and almost exclusively for Blue Note Records (as both leader and sideman) Green performed well in hard bop, soul jazz, bebop and Latin-tinged settings throughout his career. Critics Michael Erlewine and Ron Wynn write, "A severely underrated player during his lifetime, Grant Green is one of the great unsung heroes of jazz guitar ...

  

  0.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Billy Eckstine

  William Clarence “Billy” Eckstine (July 8, 1914 – March 8, 1993) was an American singer of ballads and bandleader of the swing era. Eckstine's smooth baritone and distinctive vibrato broke down barriers throughout the 1940s, first as leader of the original bop big-band, then as the first romantic black male in popular music.

  

  25.0%
  

  25.0%
  

  50.0%
  
•  Kevin Eubanks

  Kevin Tyrone Eubanks is an American jazz guitarist who was the leader of the Tonight Show Band with host Jay Leno from 1995 to 2009. He also led The Primetime Band on the short-lived Jay Leno Show. He composed the Tonight Show's closing theme music, "Kevin's Country," in 1992. When NBC moved Leno's show from late night to primetime (10PM in eastern time zones), Eubanks moved with the band to continue conducting the music for the new version of Leno's show.

  

  0.0%
  

  0.0%
  

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•  Pat Metheny

  Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny (pronounced muh-THEE-nee; born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer. One of the most successful and critically acclaimed jazz musicians to come to prominence in the 1970s and '80s, he is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, post-bop, latin jazz and jazz fusion.

  

  100.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Marc Ribot

  Marc Ribot (born 21 May 1954 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American guitarist and composer. His own work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.

  

  33.3%
  

  33.3%
  

  33.3%
  
•  Sonny Sharrock

  Warren Harding "Sonny" Sharrock (August 27, 1940 – May 26, 1994) was an American jazz guitarist. He was once married to singer Linda Sharrock, with whom he sometimes recorded and performed. One of few guitarists in the first wave of free jazz in the 1960s, Sharrock was known for his incisive, heavily chorded attack, his bursts of wild feedback, and for his use of saxophone-like lines played loudly on guitar.

  

  0.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  100.0%
  
•  Eddie Condon

  Albert Edwin Condon (16 November 1905 – 4 August 1973), better known as Eddie Condon, was a jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in the so-called "Chicago school" of early Dixieland, he also played piano and sang on occasion.

  

  100.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Steve Rochinski

  Stephen Rochinski (born 20 January 1954) A self-taught bebop jazz guitarist, he has worked and performed with Tal Farlow, Attila Zoller, Jimmy Raney, Pete and Conte Candoli, Tim Hagans, Joe Lovano, Greg Hopkins, Gary Foster, Pat Harbison, Jeff Sherman, Hal Melia, Chip Stephens, Hank Marr, Brad Goode, Joe Hunt, Scott Lee, Chuck Redd, Richard Evans, Bob Freedman, Tony Tillman, as well as numerous studio, concert, club date and international clinic appearances.

  

  0.0%
  

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  0.0%
  
•  John Stein (guitarist)

  John Stein, is a jazz guitarist, born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His education includes a Bachelor of Music from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he is an associate professor.

  

  100.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Anthony Wilson

  Anthony Wilson is a jazz guitarist and composer. He is the son of bandleader Gerald Wilson.

  

  0.0%
  

  100.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Bill Frisell

  William Richard "Bill" Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American guitarist and composer. One of the leading guitarists in jazz since the late '80s Frisell's eclectic music touches on progressive folk, classical music, country music, noise and more. He is known for using an array of effects to create unique sounds from his instrument.

  

  100.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  0.0%