Louis Armstrong

This DVD lesson could be titled The Music of Louis Armstrong for Fingerpicking Guitar or Gary Davis Meets Louis Armstrong. Born in 1896, the brilliant Piedmont guitarist Gary Davis came of age in the teens and the twenties. He was in his prime during the Jazz Age and his playing shows it. His guitar style and techniques came out of the twenties. It enabled him to play like a band. His thumb playing the rhythmic sections of the band while his index finger soloed over this. Rev. Davis only used his thumb and index fingers to pick. When asked why he replied with a smile: “That’s all I need!” In Rev. Davis’s playing you can hear the drive of Louis Armstrong as well as Louis’s bugle call riffs.