Phil Guy didn't eclipse his older brother Buddy's status as a blues superstar, and in reality, Phil's funky brand of blues was not captured correctly for posterity. But he remained an active attraction on the Chicago circuit, following in his sibling's footsteps and patiently waiting for his own star to rise up until his death. Like his sibling, Phil Guy played with harpist Raful Neal (for a decade) before leaving the Baton Rouge scene for Chicago in 1969. There he played with his brother's high-energy organization as well as behind harpist Junior Wells (Phil handled guitar duties with Sammy Lawhorn on Wells' underrated mid-'70s Delmark album On Tap).]

Eric Gales was hailed as the second coming of Jimi Hendrix when he first hit the blues circuit, an anointment that carries with it impossible pressures, and while Gales is a wonderful guitarist (naturally right-handed, he was taught to play the guitar left-handed, an odd thing, but again, Hendrix-like), he isn't Hendrix, nor will he or anyone ever be. Working out of the power trio format, Gales has more than proven he can play on his many albums, but his voice is average at best, and his songs tend toward the generic, often more like vehicles for guitar leads than actual songs that are crying out to be sung. That's why Ghost Notes is so intriguing, because it's Gales' first all-instrumental album, and therefore it bypasses his weaknesses as a performer and plays to his strengths – the man sure can play guitar.

Matt Schofield is regarded as one of the most distinctive and innovative British blues guitarists, and has been rated in the top ten of British blues guitarists by Guitar & Bass Magazine. Schofield's prowess has taken his band to twelve countries; seen him playing with musicians including Buddy Guy and Robben Ford; and brought a note in the Penguin Book of Blues Recordings as one of only two living British artists to gain the maximum four-star rating. In addition, he has been admitted to the British Blues Awards Hall of Fame. His debut album for Provogue, Schofield finds himself as representative for the long tradition of British Blues on the ultimate blues guitar label, and gaining a home amongst his peers - the world's greatest contemporary blues players.

Founding Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman essentially retired from music after leaving the band in 1993, choosing to dedicate time to his family and his restaurant, Sticky Fingers. He returned to music in 1997 with Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings, a rotating old-time rock & roll, R&B, blues, and boogie collective of superstar musicians anchored by keyboardist Georgie Fame, guitarist Albert Lee, pianist Gary Brooker, and guitarist Terry Taylor. Their first album, Struttin' Our Stuff, appeared that year and it was followed two years later by Anyway the Wind Blows, which featured cameos from Peter Frampton, Geraint Watkins, Paul Carrack, and, notably, fellow Stone Keith Richards.

As the main songwriter for Chicago's Chess label, bassist/singer Willie Dixon was one of the most influential and prolific figures in blues. Although he often served as a session player for other well-known musicians, his soulful presence was always felt, as revealed on this excellent 18-track collection which features Dixon performing with Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Magic Sam, Otis Rush, and other blues luminaries.

Rendezvous With the Blues marks another step in the normalization of Melvin Taylor. With Lucky Peterson on keyboards, Taylor is much more the featured lead guitarist in a straight-band context that too often finds him fighting for room to move in the full arrangements. He takes a jazzy lead on the opening "Coming Home Baby," but that runs counter to the measured, mid-tempo groove that dominates the first three tracks and seems like a move to court the contemporary rock-blues audience. So does some of the material – no originals, with ZZ Top, Stephen Stills, and Carlos Santana's tribute to John Lee Hooker in the songwriter credits on one side and Charles Singleton and Prince for contemporary black funk/rock relevance on the other. Horns kick in to punctuate the slinky, clavinet-anchored funk on "I'm the Man Down There," but Taylor's solo gets cluttered up by a duel with Peterson (on guitar here). Taylor is better-served when he escapes the rock beat straitjacket on "Tribute to John Lee Hooker" – the Latin-tinged rhythms give his guitar more freedom to float and sting.

In this 2003 performance from the Austin City Limits series, New England's Susan Tedeschi demonstrates a range that extends well beyond her blues base. Following the blueprint employed by Bonnie Raitt a few decades earlier, she covers John Prine's "Angel from Montgomery" (a signature tune for Raitt), inserting a snippet from the Grateful Dead's "Sugaree." The piano balladry of her "Wrapped in the Arms of Another" could fit just fine on a Raitt album. The set also finds her sampling from the songbooks of Sly Stone ("You Can Make It If You Try"), Bob Dylan ("Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"), and Stevie Wonder ("Love's in Need of Love Today"), in addition to the more straightforward blues of Koko Taylor ("Voodoo Woman"). Though Tedeschi's stinging lead guitar provides the focus, she receives strong support from a band featuring the interplay of electric pianist Jason Crosby (who doubles on violin) and William Green on Hammond B-3 organ. Highlights include a tribute to jam-band inspiration Col. Bruce Hampton on "Hampmotized" and the simmering "Wait for Me," with its echoes of Aretha Franklin.

The Yardbirds are certainly one of the most unstable British rock groups of all time, reflected by the fact that it produced three of the greatest guitarists in history: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. It is mostly because all three started out with the Yardbirds that the group is regarded so highly even though they only had a half-dozen Top 40 hits in 1965-1966: "For Your Love" (#6), "Heart Full of Soul" (#9), "I'm A Man" (#17), "Happening Ten Years Time Ago" (#30), "Over Under Sideways Down" (#13), and "Shapes of Things" (#11). I provide the list to show the shortcomings of this 25 track collection from Repertoire. You get only four of their top six hits and there are several "hits" collections which rectify this problem. True, most of those are multi-disc collections, but we are talking about one of the pivotal rock 'n' roll groups of the Sixties.

This 45-song, two-disc collection is subtitled "two decades of killer fretwork", and never was a set so aptly described. Chess Records was the home to seemingly every hot guitar player in the Chicago area, and many of them make their appearance here. Besides the usual label guitar hotshots (Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Buddy Guy, Lowell Fulson, Earl Hooker, Otis Rush, Robert Nighthawk, Little Milton), space is given to sideman work from legends like Hubert Sumlin and Robert Jr. Lockwood and great one-offs by lesser-known artists like Jody Williams, Danny Overbea, Eddie Burns, Joe Hill Louis, Morris Pejoe, Lafayette Thomas and others. It seems as if everyone recorded for Chess at one time or another, also explaining the inclusion of tracks by John Lee Hooker, Albert King, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Lonnie Brooks, Hound Dog Taylor and Elmore James. If electric blues guitar's your thing, then look no further than this fine two-disc compilation.