13 great guitar players you may not have heard of

The electric guitar is the most important instrument in modern music and there are many legendary players from Jimi Hendrix to Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. But there are many that could have been just as famous. They're certainly talented enough. For whatever reason they just haven't captured the public's imagination.

We've all seen people in a small venue and asked ourselves, "Why isn't this guy a much bigger deal?" Or said, "I'll be able to say I saw him when ..." Then it never seemed to take off for them. Watch the video of Walter Trout below and then try to figure out the difference between him and the guitar heroes of our youth. If you figure it out, let me know.

This could actually have been a list of 25 or 30, but I thought I should stop at 10. Then I couldn't cut the list and settled for a dozen. That became a baker's dozen. I finally convinced myself to stop before it got really silly.

Some of these artist have a greater following than others, but none are what you'd call stars. There's a certainly a blues theme to the list. That's where most of the great guitarists of today are performing. So here, in no particular order (except starting and ending with slide guitar virtuosos Sonny Landreth and Roy Rogers) are 13 guitar players you should look into. All are profiled on the site (or will be soon.):

Sonny Landreth

Walter Trout

Joe Louis Walker

Mato Nanji

Ronnie Earle

Coco Montoya

Tab Benoit

Nick Moss

Debbie Davies

Robben Ford

Lurrie Bell

Tinsley Ellis

Roy Rogers