I agree with all the above mentioned artists.
To many variables involved with "THE BEST"
I'll throw out a couple not mentioned yet.
George Thorogood
Roy Rogers (the slide player not the singing cowboy)
As a longtime slide player myself I would agree there is no one best
player...my fav's are Jerry Douglas #1 hands down , love David Gilmour
and I gotta throw Johnny Winter in there ... Roy Rogers kicks it too.
the list goes on.
Maybe not the best, but my Grandpop was a great guitar player, and he could rock a slide. He had a dobro at one time, and a pedal steel. I need to get those CD's of him playing from my cousins. He passed in '92.
So nice to grow up with great guitar as a background.
REALLY love all the offerings here folks, great stuff!! Probably should have called the thread "Favorite Slide Guitar Player", not Best. I'm listening to everything here and am having a great day off work with yummy coffee in a robe gettin' my slide on!
I am sure I am having more fun playing it than my family has listening to it.
My only hope is what Duane Allman said when he started playing slide.
''I heard Ry Cooder playing some time ago and I said, Man that's for me. And I got me a bottle and went in the house for about three weeks and I said 'Hey man, we've got to learn the songs-the blues to play on the stage. I love this. This is a gas'. So we started it and for a while it was everybody looking at me and thinking, 'Oh No! He's getting ready to do it again! Everybody just lowered their heads-start it off fast and get it over with. But then I got a little better at it, and improved it, but now everybody's blowing it all out of proportion. It's just fine for me as a relief from the other kind of playing"
Until I "get a little better" I have nicknamed my slide "Guantanamo"
Saw Duane Allman play a bunch of times, including closing down the Fillmore East (after which a young Toker Villain climbed onto the stage, shook hands with and thanked Bill Graham, and lit up a number with Dicky Betts).
Duane absolutely tore it up on One Way Out.
But I thought this was about still living artists (Duane was the best though. And do people even realize how many times they heard him as a Mussel Shoals backup musician!)
so many other fine slide players....sleep calls....
Edit, NigelSSI, I've seen.. Mr Manx play live many times and he always puts on a excellent show... This video doesn't the depth of his playing. but... Love his music!.......
on, Teach your Children, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young...
"...Jerry Garcia plays the pedal steel (slide) guitar on this '70 pop anthem, making it the most widely recognized piece of music he may likely ever - nearly anonymously - be part of. Garcia's bright melodic riffs are the song's fourth voice, providing a lyrical counterpoint to Nash's soothing harmonized homilies that spanned a hit-radio bridge over the much-hyped generation gap.
When Garcia recorded the track, he'd been playing the pedal steel for all of two weeks."
^Been meaning to ask tVillain, have you actually ever been one toke over the line?
I saw John Hammand at McCabes's, Golden Bear, Ash Grove, Four Muses, and Belly-Up over the course of about 45 years. He's always good. Favorite show was probably at Four Muses - very small and intiimate setting till about 2:00AM, but now, my mama don't allow me to stay out all night long.
A reporter once asked Jimi Hendrix what it felt like to be the best guitar player in the world. Jimi's response was "I don't know. You'd have to ask Rory."
Scanning these postings, I'd say the acoustic slide players are underappreciated and probably unknown. There are a few modern folks who play in the hapa haole style of the masters of the Jazz Age like Sol Hoopii and Benny Nawahi. One is Mike Neer, who plays an old National squareneck:
Let us know!