PARLOR TUNES
Mid1800’s - early 1900’s

The realization of the steel-string guitar by CF Martin allowed people an easily portable instrument for either accompaniment or solo playing. Much of the music of the time was performed in small social gatherings as most people could play at least one instrument. Sheet music stores prospered, selling the popular music of the day. Two enormously influential tunes were Henry Worrall’s “Sebastopol’ (Open D Tuning) and “Spanish Fandango’ (Open G Tuning). When these tunes crossed over from Europe to America, they caught the imagination of rural musicians who adapted the techniques to American folksong.Blues



BLUES
1900’s – early 1940’s

The steel-string guitar was the ideal accompaniment for southern blacks already marginalized socially and economically. It was inexpensive and portable. Originally, the parlor style of playing was blended with songs passed father to son, field hollers, and older African style vocalization. In the classic form a singer usually accompanied himself on guitar, his voice and instrument weaving a complex pattern as the 12-bar verses were expanded or contracted, the guitar underlining or taking up where the voice left off and becoming an extension of the voice itself.

There developed an amazing array of variety within what is basically a very limited form. This was originally due to lack of communication and isolation of the rural communities of the south. Each particular region fostered distinct musical styles. The Mississippi Delta generated the harsh, rhythmic music of Charlie Patton, Son House and Robert Johnson characterized by intense, emotional singing, often in the bottleneck style. Texas bluesmen, like Lightnin’ Hopkins, often utilizes monotonic bass with extended guitar lines weaving around the vocals. In Georgia and the Carolinas, a ragtime based form of playing developed, with intricate, syncopated guitar parts supporting the vocals. Players, from the simpler playing of Brownie McGhee to the Charleston-rhythm influenced virtuoso Blind Blake, could be heard in this style. Sometimes, a style could be defined by a single player in a single town, such as Skip James from Betonia, Mississippi. Most of what we know of the acoustic blues styles comes from the “race records” of the 1920’ and 30’s. Acoustic blues faded as electricity allowed guitarists to play loudly in a band context and the music moved to urban centers such as Chicago.

Muhlenberg County, KY

Late 1920’s – early 1950’s
Near the beginning of this century, a handful of local guitarists such as Kennedy Jones, Arnold Schultz and Amos Johnson began playing the guitar in a picking style that utilized the right hand thumb to play a heavy four-beat rhythm on the bass strings while the first finger played melody. Mose Ranger and Ike Everly, father of Don and Phil Everly, further developed the style – eventually known as “thumbpicking” – into a highly polished method of playing everything from folk songs to Tin Pan Alley tunes. Rager and Everly were mentors to dozens of guitarists in and around Drakesboro, Kentucky, including a young Merle Travis, who brought his own genius to the style and popularized it throughout the world. He used movable jazzy chord formations that allowed him to play all over the fingerboard. These techniques, combined with his palm-muted bass notes and flashy, banjo-like rolls often gave the impression of two guitars playing simultaneously.

A young Chet Atkins was heavily influenced by Travis., carrying the legacy further, changing the face of country music, even adding rockabilly, sophisticated jazz tunes and classical pieces to the repertoire. (See also Jerry Reed – Brad B. Jones)



Fahey/Kottke/American 60’s

John Fahey was an American original. He drew from such diverse sources as country blues, old time music, Indian ragas, European classical music and Gregorian chants. He was the first to compose for the steel string guitar exclusively as a solo instrument. Leo Kottke took much inspiration from Fahey’s playing and added a fiery right hand to create his own propulsive and dynamic style to what has become known as “American Primitive Guitar”.

The early sixties were a time of exploration, expanding the repertoire to include rags and dances, fiddle tunes, and Celtic music. David Laibman and Dave Van Ronk (who mentored a young Bob Dylan) began exploring the possibilities of playing classic ragtime tunes on the guitar. The bluesmen, of the 20’s and 30’s were rediscovered and began performing for white concert audiences. The study of fiddle tunes and rags offered the fingerstyle guitarists with a whole new array of styles and techniques, and led to the introduction of celtic jigs, reels and airs to the repertoire. Singer-songwriters, such as Paul Simon and James Taylor, broke out of simple pattern picking to develop highly individualistic styles of accompaniment.



BRITISH FOLK REVIVAL

Until the early sixties, British acoustic players had been heavily influenced by American folk musics, especially pattern pickers such as Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and bluesmen such as Big Bill Broonzy. The first acoustic guitarist to make an impact in Britain was Davey Graham. His experiments in fusing folk, blues, jazz and ethnic music were miles ahead of his contemporaries. His travels had taken him to Tangiers, where he came up with a new tuning more compatible with the music of the oud – DADGAD. He exploited the potential of the tuning to explore the modal characteristics of the old Irish air. The tuning became a standard tuning for the developing accompaniment of traditional material.

By this time, it became obvious that an American guitar style played with traditional British music or Celtic melodies was not the answer. It took much experimentation, and finally a new and fascinating guitar approach developed. The first recording defining this approach was Graham’s recording with traditional singer Shirley Collins.

Martin Carthy and Nic Jones led the way in accompanying British folksong. Bert Jansch used the new approaches for songwriting. John Renbourn, well versed in American folk styles, explored Medieval and Rennaisance musics, “taking medieval dance tunes and treating it as I would a jig or reel, or drawing on contrapuntal practice in making arrangements of folk songs”. When Jansch and Renbourn combined to form the group Pentangle, they added their love for the contemporary jazz of Charles Mingus and Thelonius Monk to the blend. Carthy, Renbourn and Dave Evans further explored the possibilities of altered tunings.



CONTEMPORARY
Mid 1970’s – present

Today’s fingerstyle guitarists draw from all the previous periods of growth, as well as exploring new and varied approaches and techniques to what is possible on the instrument.
The music from these earlier periods provides a wide musical palette to draw from. Pierre Bensusan began as a player in the vein of Renbourn’s celtic recordings. He soon combined this with the improvisational possibilities of jazz and his north african heritage to develop an individual,virtuosic style of his own. Alex DiGrassi combined the 60’s American and British vocabularies with experiments in altered tunings to help develop a style unfortunately lumped with the title “new age”. Possibly the most influential modern acoustic guitarist was Micheal Hedges. Coming from a background of modern classical composition, Hedges developed a dizzying array of new techniques, such as left-hand tapping, right hand slapped harmonics and muting to perform his compositions and songs.

Duck Baker is a passionate encyclopedia of music styles, from country blues, folk and ragtime to modern jazz and ethnic musics. He draws from and combines these styles with astonishing technique making a significant contribution to the repertoire of the guitar.

Tim Sparks uses his incomparible abilities to explore the odd-metered dance styles of the Balkans, as well as Klezmer music and the musics of the Orient and North Africa. This with his own compositions puts him at the cutting edge of the possibilities of the guitar.

Peppino D’Agostino uses the rhythmic drive of Kottke’s music and the contemporary techniques of Hedges, et. al,, combined with Mediterranean melodic sensibilities to create a beautiful guitar style.

There are many more guitarists presently expanding the boundaries of the acoustic guitar. These are but a small sampling.