Well, technically, guitar and banjo, but still…
I decided to include this, but I didn’t want to go for the clip from Deliverance because that would be too obvious and pretty much everyone’s seen it.
Instead, I want to highlight this performance from 1973. It features Carl Jackson on banjo and Glen Campbell on acoustic guitar, and it’s really, really good.
I’ve always enjoyed the song (no, I haven’t seen the movie, and I honestly don’t want to; that’s not a judgement call or anything, I’m just not interested), though sadly never really tried to play it because I’m really a terrible finger-picker (although hopefully that’ll be changing as I start learning Bron-Y-Aur Stomp).
Anyways… since this is an instrumental, just listen to, and watch the whole thing…
And, just as a note of curiosity…
In the movie, only Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel were credited with the piece. The problem is that they didn’t write it; they just arranged it for the film. Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith wrote it, for himself and Don Reno, in 1955. So of course he sued, and won.
So he’s an audio recording of Arthur’s original song, played by him and Don…
Enjoy!
I really enjoyed it and though I’ve heard the film version many times before I didn’t know the back story to its use in the film. I also can’t pick to save my life but I enjoy the virtuosity of the great country and bluegrass players. Don’t know if you ever saw Steve Earle’s stint with the Del Mcroury band?
The film is good by the way but the book by James Dickey is truly excellent.
The actual picking patterns in this sort of thing are pretty straight-forward really -- it’s all just three-finger forward rolls. The precision and speed are very impressive, but it’s just a question of starting out slow and practising a hell of a lot.