These are some of my own personal favorite guitar players. I grew up listening to their solos, and I still listen to them today.
When I was growing up in Israel, which was by no means a 'jazz capital' back then, I had a great jazz guitar teacher by the name of Avrey Sharon-Singer. He had studied with Chuck Wayne and Jim Hall in NY, and had a huge jazz record collection. He used to make me cassettes of selected tracks by all the great jazz players, and I would take those home, listen over and over, and learn what I could. Based on those cassettes, I soon learned which players I liked and went on to order their records from the local music store or from my parents whenever they travelled to NY.
Today, the availability of jazz CD's, books and study aids is amazing, but there is still the same problem: where do you start? Maybe these pages will give you a starting point for investigating these great artists and finding out more about your own preferences.
Another issue is that many of these artists are so eclectic that I find many people are not aware of what I consider to be their best work. Even if you know all of these artists well, I am sure you will be surprised by some of my selections.
I originally intended to present these in MP3 format, however, I decided to present these solos in very low-fidelity Real Audio format for several reasons: