Roy Smeck "In His Pastimes" McLaughing Rag & Hollyhock Rag

[Anfxyz]

Incidentally, I'm hacked off - the other day I saw a video where Smeck demonstrated the figure-of-eight strum, but now I can't find it any longer. Can someone post a link, please?

[Anfxyz]

@buybeach. You have pointed out a great contrast speciously: counterculture was a reaction against the post-war world, not against the pre-war world. 

[Nostalgico80]

This film is 85 years old. It's an important document of the living music in the Twenties. Roy Smerk's a true genius.

[jeffmoore9487]

Smeck's genius doesn't diminish other genius. In every era people drive the edge of possibility. The 60's didn't fail to produce brilliance. In fact it flourished. As in any era, we must pick and choose among the debris.

We each tend to focus on a particular style, which can inhibit our appreciation and evaluation of other styles. Ranking great players tends to largely showcase our own inevitable preconceptions. But we do it anyway, no biggy.

Smeck is awesome.

[thesicilianguitarist]

WOW.....that's all I can say...wow.

Could you imagine Roy Smeck playing with Chet Atkins?

RIP Mr. Smeck & Mr. Atkins

[navazguitar]

A musical genius!

[buybeach]

The disintegration of American popular entertainment which evolved in lockstep with the disintegration of American social mores in the 1960s and which remains today the dominant mode in popular entertainment.

It was characterized by a disdain for technique, an apathetic or even contemptuous disregard for the niceties of performance and a kind of

living-room casual" manner. Compare Smeck's masterful performance here with, say, the usual antics of a Grateful Dead concert from the mid-60s.

[buybeach]

A great master. This little film shows the immense technical accomplishment needed to maintain a headliner's career in the days before the counterculture.

[Sequitur213]

@buybeach what do you mean before the counterculture?

[ElComadreja777]

He was GREAT!!!!!!!

[FelliniFederico]

i love this man!!!!!!!!!