I don't know what it is about us Frank, but somehow or another, we always disagree ;-)--Eddie Lang was very popular in his time,so much so that they wanted to make a movie star out of him, and, so I have been told, he died do to compliations from the comsmetic surgery that the studios thought that he needed--

You can't forget Nick Lucas here, because he was a phenomenal guitarist, and his movie appearance, playing "Tip-Toe through the Tulips", was what turned the guitar into a mainstream instrument--If you want to hear some mind-blowing guitar work, listen to that recording!

Guitar does tend to be an accompanists instruments, but when Manitas de Plata played, there was no one who could upstage him, fiddle or not--

Guitar is a rhythm instrument that can play chords and melody, and in the hands of a master, there is a polyrhymical thing that you can get going that no other instrument can touch--check out Bola Sete, either his Bossa recordings, or classical stuff, such as his unbelievable recordings of works by the above mentioned Villa-Lobos--