PAISLEY'S FAVORITE PICKERS

Brad Paisley won his first Grammy for an instrumental track on his 2008 guitar album, "Play," featuring B.B. King, Buck Owens and other guitar stars. We asked Paisley to talk about some of his country guitar heroes.

• "I got to play with my seven Telecaster influences on my song 'Cluster Pluck,' which we won a Grammy for. It was a thrill because I had such a great time with John Jorgenson, Brent Mason, Steve Wariner, Vince Gill, Albert Lee, James Burton and Redd Volkaert. Those are the seven guys who are the reason I play the way I play on the Tele."

• "Chet Atkins is the most important guitarist in country music history, for many reasons. He was innovative and amazing as a player, and he also was a great producer and great record-label executive. He was someone I really never got to know, unfortunately. But, like many other people, I'm heavily influenced by him."

• "Hank Garland, who brought a lot of jazz to country music, was a major influence through my teacher. Hank was this great session player who did this great [1961] album called 'Jazz Winds From a New Direction,' which took a lot of people by storm."

• "I'm a big fan of the singer/guitarists like Steve Wariner, Vince Gill (below) and Ricky Skaggs (above) from the '80s who sort of said, 'We're about musicianship, too' at a time when country music got almost no respect for that. You had all the heavy-metal and rock bands dominating with famous guitarists. But, in country, you had three major players who had hit records as singers. It's cyclical. You're hard-pressed to find guitar heroes in pop music right now other than John Mayer. Ironically, we have this game now -- Guitar Hero -- but it's all songs from the '80s and '90s."

JON BREAM