Ragtime picking was popular across the South. John Hurt, Hacksaw Harney, Robert Wilkins, Joe Callicott, and so on played however they felt like playing, and did so not because people would invent the distorted ideas of "Delta blues" and "Piedmont blues" much later. Mance Lipscomb (born 1895), who knew and admired the older guitarist Hamp Walker of Texas when he was young, and later in life also knew John Hurt (from Mississippi) and Elizabeth Cotten (from North Carolina) personally, said Walker, Hurt, and Cotten all played similarly. Ragtime picking.
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