original top 5
1. Buddy Guy he has it all, the guitar licks and the blues voice !!
2. Albert King he made guitar bends, vibrato legendary !!
3. Robert Johnson the songs he wrote showed his greatness !!
4. Albert Collins his intense guitar playing !!
5. t bone Walker just total blues from riffs to chords !!

Modern Guitarists
1. Stevie Ray Vaughan Greatest guitarist!! Great Vocals!! PURE BLUES!!! he learned from all and made it his own !!!!!!!!! put 200% of his soul into every note,, chord,, riff !!!

2. Buddy Guy yes I have him here too !! have you heard Skin Deep ?? he is STILL one of the greats!!! Glad I’ve seen him

3. George Thorogood He puts his heart & blues soul into his playing!! a style all his own!!

4. Eric Clapton I’m not a fan of him,, but I recognize his playing and blues background for all these years!!

5. Joe Bonamassa can’t win all those awards without doing something right !!! great playing ,, solo’s just flat out blues playing !!

1. Cornell Dupree – “Teasin’” – This is perhaps the most complete fusion of R&B and blues I’ve ever heard. The band is an all-star collection of top blues, jazz and R&B vets and the cream of the NYC session jazz/R&B session scene, many of whom had played with Ray Charles, Aretha, King Curtis, and others. Dupree shines throughout, as do all of the other players, especially David “Fathead” Newman – whose sax solos are pure blues/R&B heaven. It was released around 1974 on Atlantic.

2. Albert Collins – any of his early Alligator Records output, “Frostbite,” “Frozen Alive” and especially “Ice Pickin’” Some of the classic songs off these records include “Mastercard,” “If You Love Me Like You Say,” “Brick,” “The Highway is Like a Woman,” “Give Me My Blues,” “Cold Cuts,” “Snowed In,” and many more. The Grammy-winning “Showdown!” with Robert Cray and Johnny Copeland is a masterful effort also.

3. T-Bone Walker “Classics of the Modern Blues” on Blue Note. These are reissues of sessions done for Imperial in L.A. in the late 1940s/early 1950s. T-Bone was at his peak during this time.

4. Freddie King “Hide and Dance Away with Freddie King” – contains all of his legendary instrumentals, plus some wonderful vocal numbers, too.

5. Kenny Burrell is a mainstream jazz artist, a hard-core bopper as well as interpreter of standards by Duke Ellington and others – but listen to his late-night blues feeling on any of the old Prestige or Blue Note recordings from the 1950s.
“Chitlins Con Carne” and other bluesy numbers influenced countless blues and jazz guitarists. Ditto Grant Green from his golden era around the same time.

6. If you haven’t heard Wes Montgomery play the blues, you owe it to yourself to check him out. The word “genius” gets thrown around a lot in music, too much so, but Wes is in the pantheon of greatest masters of jazz (and blues) on any instrument. Check his playing on “Sundown,” a big-band jazz-blues number; on piano is the legendary Herbie Hancock. It was done about 1965-66, around that time.

There’s no “greatest” blues guitar when you get down to it, only different flavors. The music has been around so long now that you could easily pick a 100 wonderful stylists and still leave good people out. Some of the acoustic blues artists were simply amazing, if you have heard Blind Blake, you know what I mean!
The thing about blues (and jazz and gospel) is that being a virtuoso is not the be-all and end-all; having a personal voice and style is as important if not more so.
Lastly, the blues was invented by black people but it belongs to everyone now, so no remarks about whites or others not being able to play it. That’s bull, about as valid as the people who claim no one save blacks can play jazz.

OK, these picks aren’t in order of historical importance or anything like that. Just my desert island picks for tasty electric blues playing.

1. Albert Collins – I saw him live many times, and his late 1970s/early 1980s band was unbelieveably tight, funky yet downhome at the same time. Albert’s style was so unique, you just knew it was him when he started playing. And you haven’t lived til you see Albert and his 100′ long cable serenade passers-by on the sidewalk outside.

2. T-Bone Walker – I love B.B. King down to his toes, but w/o T-Bone, there’s no B.B. King. The jazzy, swinging, big-band side of blues. B.B. admits that he tried very hard to cope T-Bone’s sound early in his career, got close, but couldn’t quite nail it. Course, he went on to found his own style and that amazing vibrato of his.

3. Freddie King – he and Albert Collins were the kings of the blues instrumental, in my book.

4. Duane Allman – This guy is the slide maestro far as I am concerned. Maybe his stuff with the Allman Brothers was blues-rock, but his sessions at Muscle Shoals proved his blues and R&B mettle. As much as I love EC, Duane gets the nod as a pure bluesman. Close runners-up on slide: Earl Hooker, Bonnie Raitt.

5. SRV – what can you say? The man was a giant, and all the greats said so, from Clapton on down.

Also, Joe Louis Walker, Robert Cray, johnny Copeland, Anson Funderburg, Matt “Guitar” Murphy, Otis Rush, Cornell Dupree.