Best musician in the world?

Thanks Case, I will check him out. That was the real point of the original question, not so much the musician who is greatest at playing one instrument, because then it is a matter of the listener's taste in music and instruments. When someone is truly prodigious at two or more instruments, that is what freaks me out. Especially when the instruments are as divergent as forms of expression in a physical/technical sense, such as drums versus violin, etc.

To your categories, the only amendment I would offer would be in the category of drumming, Tony Williams, recently deceased, is on a par with Coltrane, Heifetz and others. As a matter of fact, Jascha Heifetz' grandson, Danny, is a great drummer in his own right. I recommend to anyone interested, to listen to the guitarist I started this string off with, Shawn Lane. Many of the living guitarists mentioned in this list know of him, if not rever his playing. I actually spoke with Eric Johnson about Lane, and he willingly tabbed him as the greatest living electric guitarist. He went as far as to question whether or not Lane had sold his soul in the same fashion others had once claimed Paganini did. Holdsworth said no one on earth including himself could match the playing he had heard from Lane. I have tapes of him playing with Black Oak Arkansas at the age of 17 in 1978 that is so ridiculous as to be truly mind-boggling. He does a rendition of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D maj on an electric guitar that is as fast and precise- while still emotionally valid- as any work I have heard from Perlman or others. He was 17. His story is more fascinating than I could do justice to in such an (already-too-long)post.

Hey Dustych, I didn't want to bring up Buckethead because it(Bucket) is my best friend, I am the singer of two bands with it (Deli Creeps and Hook and Pull Gang) and I didn't want to scare anyone... Buckethead is definitely in his own class on guitar, and he is a phenomenal bass player as well. Someone wrote about Stanley Jordan in an earlier string, about his two-handed playing on guitar, and I wondered if they had ever seen or heard Bucket- his two-handed playing is impossible to comprehend. I could go on about him, but if you haven't heard him play, you couldn't possibly understand his stature...