Throw a stone in Western Kentucky and chances are you'll hit a picker. They call it thumbpicking down there. Eddie Pennington is more purist in the Travis style than a lot of them. His son Alonzo is real good as well.. as is JT Oglesby who can talk for days about this.
Arnold Shultz, a black man from Alabama who never recorded but drifted through the area with his delta thing caused a shift in the approach to the instrument.. ...Kennedy Jones, Mose Rager and Ike Everly heard the call and developed the style to a high level of dexterity, which later influenced Merle to take it further and gave him a great career..