TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

Maart

I had the good fortune this year to see 4 phenomenal guitarists live : Martin Barre, Nick Harper, the extraordinary Tommy Emmanuel, and our own David Hughes.

What would you say makes a truly great guitarist, and which guitarists playing currently should I definitely see live?


Many thanks

Keith

I'd go further than that, and ask you to list your Top 5 please - both electric & acoustic.

Is it being unfair or greedy to ask for bassists as well?

Paul

a good guitarist is one that either

makes your jaw drop - eduardo niebla ( or something like, a very good spanish classical guitarist)

makes you want to practice so much your fingers bleed -prendo (northern gutarist)

Or one thta plays well and can sing too-  well im trying lol ( so is my dad hes bringing out a cd soon)

ps  if you are near scarborough look out for the following;

john watton (or tom)

slinky malink
 
tom townsend

daz cooke

prendo

hutch

Wow! This is a big one and no mistake. A bit like the Desert Islands Discs again.

One of my favourite guitarists of all time is Richard Thompson. He's just not scared at all. I've been watching the darkness and basking in the sunshine of his guitar playing for thirty years and I don't think I've ever seen him repeat himself in all that time. How's about the live Tear Stained Letter from the Watching The Dark boxset? How can you get more out of a plank of wood than that? How's about the live Calvary Cross from Guitar Vocal? How's about the time he burned the speaker out in my brand new Randall amp in California? Smokin', literally! I love his electric playing and I love his acoustic playing too. But what a songwriter too!

Sir Martin Carthy is also a hero for me. I've been watching him for over thirty years and I still can't figure out what the hell he's doing. Sheer genius. There's no one plays the guitar like Sir Martin. Especially on the electric, where he's a hooligan!

Dan Ar Braz is wonderful in the freedom of his playing, again on electric or acoustic. I've been very lucky to have recorded six albums with Dan and he blows me away all the time. I feel very privileged to count him as a friend and Jan and I will be visiting him in Brittany next month.

Django Reinhardt still takes my breath away, some 70 years after his best recordings. My dad was seven then! He inspires me every day and I even got to play in a Django band for a while back in the seventies. Timeless. His electric playing is not so great though  :-\

Nic Jones was another acoustic guitar hero. I went to see him at the MSG in Manchester (no, not MonoSodium Glutamate, but the Manchester Sports Guild club, where incidentally I also saw Sir Martin for the first time) and I went to get his autograph. He was so nice to me. I was about 15 and cheeky. He took all the time he had between his first and second sets to talk me through his tunings, even giving me chord diagrams, telling me what books of folksongs to check out and gave me his phone number so that I could ask him anything I wanted at any time. I was too shy to use it though and I was devastated when he had his accident. Hero.

I met Ike Isaacs whose name maybe some of the older members of the board will recognise. Ike played with George Shearing back when I was still in nappies and after a long session career became the other guitarist with Diz Disley in Stephane Grappelli's comeback in the 70s. The first issue of Guitar magazine about 1973 or 74 featured one of his solo guitar pieces. I tracked down the volume of these and arranged them for string quartet while I was at music college in Huddersfield. Soon after he was in town with Stephane and I went to get the autograph. I presented him with my score of his pieces. He seemed knocked out and invited me to London for a weekend when he was playing at the Festival Hall with Stephane. I stayed with him in Wembley and he seemed like a long lost uncle.The day of the gig he got all these old guitars out. A Gibson L5, a Stromboli and an old Epiphone maybe. Details are hazy here, but I remember Derek Bailey came round to saw a hole in an old Gibson in order to put a Charlie Christian pickup in it. Anyway, Ike asked me which guitar sounded best that day. I can't remember which it was but he said, "Yes, I agree", and that was the guitar he used on the gig! What a gent. He went to live in Australia where he died. What a nice man.

I love Robert Fripp. I think he must have a brain the size of a planet. He's always new and greatly underrated. I like Adrian Belew too, and whatever happened to Allan Holdsworth?

Jimi Hendrix, Keef Richards, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, David Rhodes, Jerry Donahue, Ritchie Blackmore in the early days, George Harrison, Martin Barre, Ralph McTell, Dave Gilmour, Simon Nicol, Michael Landau, Paul Harwood (yet to be discovered, from Shrewsbury - fabulous fingerstyle soloist!), BB King, David Grisman, Doc Watson, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Johnny Marr, Bert Jansch, Eric Stewart, Kevin Dempsey, Kieran Halpin (who has a similar right arm technique to Keith Moon!), Bucky Pizzarelli, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Mark Bodell, Mark Kelly (Altan), Jerry Douglas, Martin Taylor, PJ Wright and all my other favourites I've missed out...

Bassists:
Rod Clements, Dave Pegg, Jeff Berlin, Sir Danny Thompson, Alan Thomson, Pat Donaldson, Miranda Sykes, Niels Henning Orsted Pederson, Jimmy Johnson, Lee Sklar, John Entwistle, Mick Bennion, Jim Lee (Slade), Overend Watts, Sir Tony Levin, Sir Pete Zorn and sometimes the things that come out of my own bass are pretty good too (I had some great teachers).

Basically, if they turn you on, they have the magic and that's who you should be listening to!

Maart

Great answer Maart. I will certainly check out some of the Martin Carthy electric stuff.

Very diplomatic ending too  ;)

Cheers

Keith

No mention of Blind Arthur Blake, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt and Blind Boy Fuller ?

I've always felt Mike Oldfield's playing to be hugely underrated.  He's done some truly jaw-dropping stuff that's both technically incredible and musically wonderful, and it's all fingerpicked, whether on acoustic or electric... but he never makes any "best guitarist" lists, while dull-as-ditchwater soft metal fretwankers and Eric Clapton always do.

He's just about to start a US tour.....and will be in mainland Europe from February - alas, no UK dates listed yet.

http://www.therealallanholdsworth.com/

There are many underrated heros in my lists too as you can see. Paul Harwood from Shrewsbury! Phew! Any acoustic club organisers out there, I can put you in touch. I'm afraid EC or MK never did it for me. I know I'm in the minority...

I can't believe I left out Pino Palladino from my basslist!

Maart

Absolutely with you there on Martin Taylor.  I discovered his music only last year.  It was certainly worth it.  Lovely stuff.

Marianne

You once told me you weren't keen on jazz. Does that mean you wouldn't count Pastorius and Stanley Clarke in your bass selection?

Jaco and Stanley were obviously great bass players and very influential. Unfortunately, I sometimes get out the third arm and people say, "Oh, fretless. Jaco!" I then say, "Yes, he played fretless too". He wasn't the only one to discover harmonics, you know.

But then Rod Clements, who inspired me to play the fretless, was a fantastic fretless bass player, as were Rick Danko (The Band) and Boz Burrell (King Crimson/Bad Company). Tim ???? only cool physics teacher at school told me how to do it to my own cheapo bass when I was about 13 and I've been playing fretless ever since. In fact it took me a while to be able to play the fretted. I also studied double bass at music college.

After the initial shock of Stanley Clarke's technique wore off, I thought he should have sold his bass and bought a guitar. Soprano bass? Come on! As Pat Donaldson once told me when I was having a go on his bass, "No! Keep that left arm straight boy!"

I have to play in the style of Jaco sometimes with Blue Tapestry but it's a very busy style. I don't think he would have got away with it any other time. Look at Mark King, who is also absent from my list. I think the song is more important than the bass solo myself...

Maart

Yes - all good points. Ah Rod Clements and his fretless Rickenbacker! Must have been the first fretless player I ever heard, even before I knew what a fretless was.

Ah yes but it was the fretless Precision that sold me. There are also photos of him playing an Ampeg fretless (like Rick Danko's - I know for a fact that both Dave Pegg and Rod were big fans of Rick).

Maart

Yeah... but it's good to hear the bass player let rip every once in a while  ;D

Maart, Allan Holdsworth is playing out --- is playing here in Cleveland, Ohio on Monday night, as a matter of fact, and in the same smokey little club where Fairport played last.

Adrian Belew is one of the most underrated guitarists out there!   He has a new album coming out and has been recording with other bands and artists including Trey Anastasio, Les Claypool, Porcupine Tree and, believe it or not, William Shatner! 

Michael Brook is fantastic and creative guitarist and if you haven't heard him I urge you to check him out!  He's played with Fripp and Srinivas.... how can you go wrong with that?  O0

You have great musical taste, BTW.  :D

Annette