Carlos Santana,(born July 20, 1947) is a Mexican and American musician who first became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered a fusion of rock and Latin American jazz. The band’s sound featured his melodic, blues-based guitar lines set against Latin and Afcan rhythms featuring percussion instruments such as timbales and congas not generally heard in rock music. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades. He experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. In 2003 Rolling Stone magazine listed Santana at number 20 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. He has won 10 Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards.

Here´s one of my favorite Santana tracks performed live at Montreux 2011.

A guitarist who influenced the music scene over many decades with his innovative work was Robert Fripp.

Robert Fripp (born 16 May 1946) is an English guitarist, composer and record producer. As a guitarist for the progressive rock band King Crimson, Fripp has been the only member to have played in all of King Crimson’s line-ups from their inception in the late 1960s to the present. He has also worked extensively as a studio musician, notably with singer David Bowie on the albums “Heroes” and Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), Brian Eno, David Sylvian and contributed sounds to the Windows Vista operating system. His complete discography lists more than seven hundred releases over four decades.

He is ranked 62nd on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2011 list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time after having been ranked by David Fricke 42nd on its 2003 list.Tied with Andrés Segovia, he also is ranked 47th on Gibson’s Top 50 guitarists of all time.

His compositions often feature unusual time signatures, which have been influenced by classical and folk traditions. His innovations include Frippertronics, soundscapes, and new standard tuning.

Here´s his legendary cult band “King Crimson”
with vocalist and bass player Greg Lake. They used one of first times a “Melotron” on this record.

The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It evolved from a similar instrument, the Chamberlin, but could be mass-produced more effectively. The instrument is played by pressing its keys, each of which presses a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, drawing it across a playback head. Then as the key is released, the tape is retracted by a spring to its initial position. Different portions of the tape can be played to access different sounds.

Here´s Robert Fripp & King Krimson.

And in this song David Bowie himself used the unmistakeable sound of Robert Fripp.

And here´s one of the fastst guitar heroes.

John McLaughlin (born 4 January 1942), also known as Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, is an English guitarist, bandleader and composer. His music includes many genres of jazz which he coupled with elements of rock, Indian classical music, Western classical music, flamenco and blues to become one of the pioneering figures in fusion.

After contributing to several key British groups of the early 1960s McLaughlin made Extrapolation, his first album as a bandleader, in 1969. He then moved to the U.S., where he played with Tony Williams‘s group Lifetime and then with Miles Davis on his electric jazz-fusion albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, and On the Corner.

His 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Indian influences.

McLaughlin has been cited as an influence by a number of prominent musicians. He is a Grammy Award winner and has been awarded multiple “Guitarist of the Year” and “Best Jazz Guitarist” awards from magazines such as Down Beat and Guitar Player based on reader polls. In 2003, he was ranked 49th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time“.In 2009, Down Beat Magazine included McLaughlin in its unranked list of “75 Great Guitarists”, in the “Modern Jazz Maestros” category In 2012, Guitar World magazine ranked him #63 on its top 100 list. In 2010, guitarist Jeff Beck called him “the best guitarist alive” McLaughlin was also referred to as the best guitarist alive by Pat Metheny. McLaughlin’s solo on the cut “Miles Beyond” from his album Live at Ronnie Scott’s won the 2018 Grammy Award for the Best Improvised Jazz Solo.

Here´s playing with guitar heroe Carlos Santana.

And here´s a very rare record from 1963 with the Graham Bond Organization.

From the first days when I started guitar playing the blues legend John Mayall influenced me as well.

John Mayall, OBE (born 29 November 1933) is an English blues singer, guitarist, organist and songwriter, whose musical career spans over fifty years. In the 1960s, he was the founder of John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, a band which has counted among its members some of the most famous blues and blues rock musicians. They include Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jack Bruce, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Mick Taylor, Don “Sugarcane” Harris, Harvey Mandel, Larry Taylor, Aynsley Dunbar, Hughie Flint, Jon Hiseman, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Andy Fraser, Johnny Almond, Walter Trout, Coco Montoya, Kal David, and Buddy Whittington.

Here´s John Mayall with Don “Sugarcane” Harris.

Don Francis Bowman “Sugarcane” Harris (June 18, 1938^[1] – November 30, 1999) was an American rock and roll violinist and guitarist.

I finish my story about guitar heroes with the blues legend Johnny Winter, there would be many more incredible guitarists, but it´s not possible to list all of them.

John Dawson Winter III (February 23, 1944 – July 16, 2014), known as Johnny Winter, was an American musician, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer. Best known for his high-energy blues-rock albums and live performances in the late 1960s and 1970s, Winter also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. After his time with Waters, Winter recorded several Grammy-nominated blues albums. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues FoundationHall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 63rd in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time“.
Here´s his most famous record.

I wish you a very happy start into a new week and come back tomorrow with a new surprise.