...unless you can play "Wildwood Flower"!

That's what I was told by one of Dad's friends when I was 14, just learning to play guitar. As I became more adept with the instrument (and could play "Wildwood Flower"), other tunes would crop up in the same sentence, but said by different people; "You ain't no guitar player unless you can play "Classical Gas"...

Amazingly, I discovered that it was not required that I play all of "Classical Gas"! If I just managed to play the first few bars, then I would hear, "That khandu, he's a guitar pickin' son-of-a-gun!"

Later, when I played in a honky-tonk band, "The House of the Risin' Sun" determined whether I was a "picker".

(Incidentally, when the bands I was in played in the honky-tonks, even in places we had never played before, someone would always, without fail, shout, "Can you play "Polk Salad Annie" and "Wipe Out"!)

"Sultans of Swing" later became a "standard" by which one was determined to be a picker.

Anyone else have similar "standards" by which they were measured?

khandu