Click on yellow links to the Artist

Advances in sampling and other dance-music gimmickry notwithstanding, the electric guitar remains the dominant technology in popular music.

Such players asJimi Hendrix converted the electric guitar from a "miked" version of its acoustic cousin to a beast with its own voice.

Whereas early adopters of the "ax" hadn't the intuition to draw fresh sounds from it, musicians like Hendrix approached the newish contraption as a tabula rasa and, in the best post-modern

fashion, took scraps of noise that earlier guitarists shunned (feedback, distortion, etc.) and made it the lingua franca of their art.

This feature will spotlight some of the great electric guitarists, organized by sub-categories: Rock, Jazz, Blues and Heavy Metal.

Keep in mind that many guitarists sit with a leg in more than one of these quarters. Rock Rock is where the electric guitar reigns.

While jazz pickers often are more technically -- and artistically -- skillful than their rock 'n' roll counterparts, the electric guitar remains a poor relation in the jazz family.

And, though modern blues is dominated with guitar oriented B.B. King rip-offs, I've always considered the Blues more of a singer's art.

Chuck Berry begins with his signature lick was ubiquitous until Jimi Hendrix changed the rules.

Hendrix embraced the purely electronic aspects of the music, and, though his solos tended sometimes to be unfocused, he became one of the more influential musicians of the 20th century.

He changed the sonic vocabulary of modern music simply with the tone of his amplifier; the above-linked site is a paean to Jimi, listing his discography and outlining his history.

Heavy metal

Emerging at the same time as Hendrix -- the late-'60s -- Eric Clapton was called "God" in omnipresent London graffiti during the summer of 1966.

He brought African-American-style blues guitar to white audiences for the first time.

And, though not nearly as inventive nor innovative as Hendrix (Clapton sometimes regurgitated obscure blues artists' solos note-for-note), he remains a tasteful and, at times, stirring virtuoso.

Like Clapton, Jeff Beck and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page did duty in The Yardbirds -- and both players have their attributes.

Beck, especially, has carved out an impressive and distinctive style, but his output remains uneven.

(He may be the best musician never to release a great album, although 1976 Wired comes close) is a branch of rock's tree -- and a feeble one, at that --

but its practitioners have methods and techniques all their own, and the genre has produced enough quick pickers that it deserves special mention.

Hendrix and Page are the promulgators of this often ham-fisted approach to the guitar (Hendrix' influence was so wide-ranging that it would be difficult to find a style of music on which he hasn't had an influence).

Their first important "heavy" progeny was Eddie Van Halenthe daddy of speed metal guitar. Though his self-titled quartet wasn't a "heavy metal" band, per se,

Eddie invented the lexicon of stock guitar phrases that would make up the shred-rock guitarist's means of expression -- speed, flash and speed. His fans are legion, and rabid -- as the above-listed site suggests.

Two of the fastest speed-metal guitarists are Steve Vai hear sound clips Joe Lynch of Dokken.also Sweden's Yngwie Malmsteen and Ozzy Osbourne's and Randy Rhodes,

began the odd yet pervasive coupling of heavy metal guitar with classical scales and modes.