![]() But White switched from acoustic to electric guitar to join the Byrds and was killed by a drunk driver at age 29. ![]() His breakthrough was built upon by California’s Clarence White, who used a microphone to make himself heard in the Kentucky Colonels. No longer drowned out by the fiddle and banjo, Watson demonstrated the amazing things that his hollow-box instrument could do. North Carolina’s Doc Watson, the Louis Armstrong of American guitar, solved this problem by playing solo or in duos and trio with another guitarist and/or bassist. Only when it strummed out chords could it make its presence felt. Even when gut strings were replaced by steel strings, even when players used picks instead of fingers, the instrument was just too quiet to be heard. When it tried to play single notes, it couldn’t compete with the volume of the fiddle and banjo. ![]() ![]() In the days before the widespread use of microphones and amplifiers, the acoustic guitar was almost always a rhythm instrument. He was someone who changed the very role of the acoustic guitar in American music. Tony Rice, who died of undisclosed causes Christmas morning at age 69, was more than just a virtuoso bluegrass guitarist. ![]()
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