You're not a guitar picker unless...

Subject: RE: You're not a guitar picker unless...
From: Mark Clark
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 08:11 PM

Well, in the spirit of Khandu's thread, I'd guess “Steel Guitar Rag” is one of those tunes, “Under the Double Eagle” is another one.

I've imbibed my way through quite a few honky-tonk bands over the years but I don't remember any of them playing “The House of the Risin' Sun,” “Polk Salad Annie,” “Wipe Out” or “Sultans of Swing.” Those tunes were more often played by pop and rock bands. I can't even imagine a honky-tonk audience requesting those.

We must've been in different honky-tonks.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: You're not a guitar picker unless...
From: harpmaker
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 07:55 PM

well, err not a period, you understand, but you know what I mean.

Subject: RE: You're not a guitar picker unless...
From: CraigS
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 07:53 PM

I had a room-mate at college who tried to get me riled by saying "when you can play "Anji" you can play guitar". I spent a whole term on it. In desperation, a friend lent me the music, which was "wrong" for the version I had on record, and in C#m because Davy Graham played it with a capo on the fourth fret. Two days after my room-mate and I went off on industrial assignments (not to see each other for six months), I got the hang of the dang thing! Then again - I can do Anji, Wildwood Flower and Classical Gas at the drop of a hat these days, and quite a lot of other things, but two tunes that I've always found extremely hard are "Stagefright" by Dave Evans and "Singing in the Country" by Rick Schoenberg. It's not like trying to do a Doc Watson impersonation, where you can hear what's needed but just can't play it right now. With those two tunes there's so much going on, my tiny mind just can't take it in!

Subject: RE: You're not a guitar picker unless...
From: harpmaker
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 07:52 PM

If your trying---your playing.period.

Subject: RE: You're not a guitar picker unless...
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 07:47 PM

In bluegrass flat-pickin' land (a country in which I once lived, but have since happily emigrated) it's "Red-Haired Boy" and "Salt Creek".

Bruce

Subject: RE: You're not a guitar picker unless...
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 07:38 PM

In Britain, if you can't play "Anji" you can't play guitar

Murray

Subject: You're not a guitar picker unless...
From: khandu
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 07:35 PM

...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