4. Joe Bonamassa
Bonamassa is a man so embodying of the blues, his beads of sweat surely wear tiny trilbies and black shades. As any guitarist knows, the pentatonic/blues scales are the easiest to first nail down, yet the hardest to play with any real identity or feel due to their widespread nature. Not the case here, Joe has combined a tenacious string-attack of fits and starts that perfectly fits on slow numbers like Dust Bowl, Stop and Sloe Gin. So soaked in vibrato and sleazy vibes is his identity, hes created a definable approach to otherwise-simple scales that when he starts rattling through the more advanced progressions, his speed-picking is amazing in the only eye-widening-way a virtuoso guitarist can be.