I just stumbled across a couple of articles about Perry Lederman which name-checks some of my favorite fingerpickers. The thing is, I never heard of him before these articles. Can anyone comment on this guy and his playing?

Marc Silber says this: "Then there was Perry Lederman. He was the greatest fingerpicker I ever heard. He died last year. He was the greatest in 1959 and is still the greatest I ever heard. He made one record. He traveled all over the country and astounded people. He was real young, just sixteen when he came to school. We had never seen anything like it. We didn't even know what fingerpicking was. To me, he was a hundred times better than Chet Atkins."

Elijah Wald says: "Perry was one of the great fingerpickers of the 1960s, a friend and influence to artists including Bob Dylan, John Fahey, Michael Bloomfield, Jerry Garcia, and many, many others. Somehow, though, he never quite got around to making a record until the last months of his life, when we went through his old tapes, culling the best versions of favorite pieces, and he recorded a handful of beautiful new cuts. Perry's playing was most strongly influenced by the quieter, more 'country' blues artists, people like Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotton, Etta Baker, and Sam McGee...Perry was a marvelously soulful, funny, insightful, and imaginative player, and this album gives me great pride and pleasure."