Buster B. Jones's Heroes Lesson Part ½
What we’re going to do now is something completely different. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I like to play a song that shows you the difference between the Merle Travis style, The Chet Atkins style and the Jerry Reed style because they are really the foundation of my musical lessons. You know everything that I learned as a child and they are all fun. The melody is a little bit different and if you learn the little nuances of each one of them it will broaden your ability not only to play but to arrange music. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take a song. I’m going to play it through the first time like Merle Travis. The second time like Chet and the third time like Jerry Reed.
Now, bear in mind I have tuned my guitar backup to standard tunings so I brought my E backup so you need to do that and before I get in to the song I want to just make a couple of points. You know the whole legacy of finger style guitar sort of started way back when. Nobody really knows when but a lot of their black players down on the delta. They were poor people. They didn’t have a lot of money. They didn’t have picks and they would take their thumb and just strike it on the bottom strings and get the rhythm going and then they would pitch the strings to whatever was there and they made up a melody. Now you have to wiggle to play the blues and I’m not a blue kind of guy. I don’t actually play much blues but I enjoy the wiggle. But anyway that sort of filtered down into the central city of Kentucky area where guys like Ike Everly and Steinegger got a hold of it.
Now, what those guys were doing was they were changing the beat to more of a country sort of thing. And Merle Travis, who was the first guy really to perfect that, took his thumb and he would strike two strings in kind of a brushing motion like that and they would play a melody with one finger. Well then years later here’s comes his guy Chet Atkins who learned by listening to Merle Travis on a radio. Now, Chet told me that they didn’t tell him on a radio that Merle was using just one finger and the thumb picks so Chet is playing with two fingers and the thumb pick and he didn’t play with the brush stroke.
Now, Chet was just a little more articulate. He did a rotation with the thumb like this. And he wouldn’t brush the high notes to get to. He would literally play them with the two fingers. Now I asked Chet, now that you know Merle Travis, why don’t you play more like him? I mean you spend all that time learning how to play. How come you don’t play more like Merle? He said, “Well, because I can.” Well, Travis was a cool lad. How do you argue with Chet? But not too much later, about 10 years later, 15 years later, this guy Jerry Reed came along.
Now, what Jerry would do with his thumb only Jerry knew? He would do crazy things and he broke all of the rules. He came up with crazy drum like rhythms and beautiful piano chords with his left hand. So, what we’re going to do is I’m going to try and demonstrate this to you by playing one song all the way through it once again. It’s called “All I need is You, Babe” and let’s jump right in to it see what it sounds like.
Here comes Chet, Here comes little Jerry Reed. Those are my heroes.
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