Another thought just occurred to me. Boy do we have a lot more resources to learn from today than those folks at the turn of the century (or even 1960). Today (if you've got the chops) you can buy a video and learn Joseph Spence's style in an afternoon. If it's raining all day you can sit with a video of Doc Watson and learn "Deep River Blues". He said it took HIM ten years to learn it. No wonder there are so many good pickers around. My hat's still off to the originators. They had to pick it out of thin air.

Rick