My second Ispiration when I relearned after crush my right wrist and thumb is my brother Gary, serious finger style work. He used a Yamaha FG-300 back then and then he moved onto a Martin OO-18.

The third time I learned I was inspired by Django Reinhardt. I figured if he could play with a burned and disabled left hand, I could also with my fingers injured. He used a Maccaferri jazz axe.

Don

Don, one of the mainstays on the Seattle folk scene during the Fifties and early Sixties was a fellow named Bob Clark. He was missing the thumb and first and second fingers on his left hand. He used a left-handed guitar (Martin 00-18, special order) and deftly managed a flat-pick held between the two remaining fingers on his left hand (ring and pinky). He had a good singing voice and his accompaniments were fairly simple, but surprisingly ingenious. If you just heard him without seeing him, you couldn't tell there was anything unusual about his playing.

Don Firth

tut tut

What facinates me about this thread is how important sound is to who influences each of use C-Flat brings it up in the James Taylor comment.

I listen to a local guitar hot shot once play the exact same pieces back to back on accoustics and electric guitars. The technique used was the same on both instruments but the results where wildly different.

A single note on the accoustic was a single not followed by the next. Each very discreet in sound. The electric with the benefit of solid body sustain turnrd the whole passage into driving blues.

This fellow was good enough to go back to the accoustic guitar and play killer drive in the blues tune as well. But it clearly is the sound that made the difference in the two examples.

To a newbie on the guitar, the chosen instrument and the sound it makes can make all the difference.

Good thread.

Don

When the Beatles popped up in 63, I was struck not so much by Harrison as by Lennon's amazingly raw rhythm style. The Yardbirds were a big impact, with little Jimmy Page playing controlled feedback/blues. I also was a big fan of Roger McGuinn and that big 12string arpeggiated sound that drove the Byrds along.

Should I mention Hendrix and Clapton, who changed everything? Sometime along in here, I was turned on to Leo Kottke and John Fahey and their innovative acoustic styles. Jorma Kaukonen's Embryonic Journey was in the same vein, very rhythmic acoustic solo material. Garcia and Weir were doing some amazing lead and rhythm stuff at the time, but it took me years to get hip to it, especially Weir's amazing counter-melodic rhythms. Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison between them laid out the groundwork for what would define Punk and New Wave ten years later. Sneaky Pete Kleinow's steel work with the Burritos showed what was possible on the outer edges of Country Music.

Jump to Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler, who again combined the qualities of innovative lead technique with rhythm guitar sensibilities to achieve a terrific overall style. Stevie Ray Vaughn managed to refine many of Hendrix's techniques and integrate them into a hard driving Texas Blues format.

What now? I'm listening to Tim Eriksen of Cordelia's Dad a lot. He's imposing a rock sense of rhythm and dynamic on the frame work of traditional material. I also like to fall back to Robert Johnson for many of the same reasons : He constantly varied rhythm for lyrical emphasis.

Walt Robertson==Carbone 12-string (one of a kind); variety of steel-string 6s at one time or another. He liked wide fingerboards and one of his favorites (got busted falling down a flight of stairs) was a Brazilian made classic that was too heavily built to be a good sounding classic, but heavily enough so it could be strung with steel strings without it eventually pulling apart.
Richard Dyer-Bennet==Vincente Tatay; later, Manuel Velazquez.
Andrés Segovia==Herman Hauser, later, José Ramirez.
Sabicas==probably Macello Barbero, maybe Arcangel Fernandez, both Flamenco.
Rolf Cahn==Rodriquez Flamenco; dunno what kind of steel-string, but it had a more or less D-shaped body, but I don't think it was a Martin. The soundboard was kind of amber, much darker than a Martins.
Dick Rosmini==dunno. He played a variety of guitars.

Don Firth

:-)

:>}

and Rick Fielding. (I'll bet that's the first time he's been next to Eddie Van Halen)

One of my big heroes was Tom Rush. He let me play his Epiphone Texan......so I bought one. (that was MANY guitars ago.)

Rick

Roger in Baltimore

If memory serves, it was Keith Richards and whatever he was playing at the moment, often a Telecater. Roy Buchanan too, playing a Telecaster. Early Led Zeppelin, with Page playing a Telecaster most of the time, though he seems to be pictured live with a Les Paul alot, but those early records sure sound Tele-like to me.

My early acoustic influences were playing better Gibsons and Martins, though Leo Kottke was playing a Bozo I think (someone can correct me on that). Don't know what Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) was using but I loved that sound.

Right now I'm listening to alot of Simon Mayor, Tony McManus, Don Ross, Dan Crary, and other masters. Most of these guys tend to use custom made or small shop acoustics, and that's where my ears are too.

What's interesting to me is how my tastes have mellowed in cosmetic terms. I now prefer more conservative instrument styles, I used to prefer Hummingbird/Dove/vine inlay/etc styled guitars.

Peace, Mooh.

Regarding The Doors ... did you mean Robbie Krieger? Manzarek played keys and supplied pedal bass on some of their songs -

C-Flat:

does J.T. use an alternate tuning on the early stuff, e.g. "Something In The Way She Moves" and if so, what is it?

To answer the question 53 posed:

Duane Allman/Dickey Betts (then after Allman's untimely demise Dickey Betts/Dan Toler, which I found, after all these years, was the guitar duo I was admiring on the songs I like best by the Allman Bros).

Dickey has had a long term love affair with a Gibson Les Paul...and Duane? Not sure, but it almost has to be a LP as well.

I'll talk guitars anytime, anywhere. Same for fishing. You don't fish, do you? (I even have a fish inlay on one of my guitars.)

Let me know when you start playing mandolin, then we'll have more thread ideas.

Peace, Mooh.

Jack Lawrence (Doc Watson's touring and playing partner of the last few years). The only great guitarist whose former touring guitar I now own. No, dammit, it didn't make a great guitarist out of me. But I can feel the magic in there when I play it, trying to get out. I hope the instrument isn't thinking, "Who is this idiot and how'd I ever get stuck with him?" Also the only great guitarist I've drunk any significant quantity of beer with.

Chris Newman. The only great guitarist who ever cooked me (and my two kids) dinner. Good at that, too.

Peter.