A fiddler recently loaned the BRC craftsman a 400 page biography of Merle Travis written by musician Deke Dickerson. The author spent his boyhood in the same township where the BRC workshop is located. Dickerson`s parents still live here and have visited our weekly Thursday evening jam session. As a youngster many years ago, the BRC craftsman grew up along side his musically inclined oldest brother, and together they learned to play the five-stringer and the guitar during the Folk Music Revival era of the 1960s. They constructed their first long neck banjos from parts left-over at a fire sale. Years later, both became surgeons.
In addition to mastering Scruggs style and clawhammer banjo, sometimes called frailing, the future BRC craftsman also learned the eponymic Travis style and Elizabeth Cotton style finger picking methods on the guitar. In those pre-Internet days, both of these techniques were exactingly taught to him as employing three fingers plucking the strings. In general, the thumb provided a steady bass foundation and tempo on the heavier-wound strings while the index and middle digits provided the melody on the treble strings. Although focusing nowadays mostly on banjo, mandolin, blues harp and electric bass, the BRC craftsman recently endeavored to closely reexamine the digital stylings of the two aforementioned artists on YouTube.
If you study the online videos of Merle Travis playing the guitar with his famous technique, you will clearly observe that the master uses only 2 digits to execute his tunes. The thumb performs a steady alternating bass note pattern while the index finger alone busily picks the melody on the higher-tuned strings.
Elizabeth Cotton was the nanny in the famous Seeger folk music household where Pete and his siblings grew-up calling her “Libba.” She composed the classic tune “Freight Train” at age twelve. Cotton was left-handed, so she played a conventionally-strung guitar rotated 180 degrees thus reversing the sequence of the strings. With the fretboard inverted, her left thumb picks-out the melody on the upper treble strings while the index finger alone plucks a steady alternating bass rhythm on the lower-heavier gauge strings.
Curiously, the Merle Travis and Elizabeth Cotton unique two-digit picking styles are executed with completely opposite thumb and index finger tasks. These days, BRC craftsman is revisiting his rusty three-finger guitar picking techniques learned decades ago.
He has a circa 1964 dreadnought Gibson SJ (Southern Jumbo) guitar that his Texas son enjoys picking when visiting and jamming at the old home place as seen above.
His dad mostly plays a 1982 cut-away Martin MC28 six-stringer with which he performed when singing with the G&F Trio at the Childrens Hospital. In his younger days, the BRC craftsman was not enamored with the cutaway design in acoustic guitars, but over the years he has grown very fond of this unique feature.
To hear the BRC craftsman play Travis style guitar (with three fingers), enter the word “folksy” into the homepage search engine and hit enter. This will take you to the CD file of his original tune “A Long Way” on the posting of August 15, 2020. Listen closely to the intro and enjoy.
From the BRC: Keep on pickin`, bro.
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