It's Back! Richard Smith at 11 with Chet!

Discussion of history's greatest guitar player.

It's Back! Richard Smith at 11 with Chet!

Postby DagerRande » Fri Aug 24, 2018 9:49 pm

I remember how disappointed I was when this disappeared but now it's back! Not good quality but here it is!

Rande Dager

We are all capable of doing more than we think we can!
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Re: It's Back! Richard Smith at 11 with Chet!

Postby Doug Working » Sat Aug 25, 2018 6:03 pm

I remember the first time I ever saw this video, I just scratched my head, but now I've got it figured out.

At age 11, I was still messing around with a flat pick, not yet having figured out that Chet was using a thumb pick!!!


But on the serious side, I can only sigh, realizing that the "ability", is a gift bestowed from above, and the good LORD bestows it upon whomever He pleases.

Others, like myself, have to work our tails off for decades to achieve what Richard naturally had at age 11, and most likely from the womb, I would conjecture.
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Re: It's Back! Richard Smith at 11 with Chet!

Postby Ray Bohlken » Sat Aug 25, 2018 11:14 pm

I really enjoy this video, Rande. it sure does make me feel a little inadequate, though...okay...a lot inadequate. I've always enjoyed Richard's playing. He sure has the touch!
Ray
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Re: It's Back! Richard Smith at 11 with Chet!

Postby Pickin Palmer » Sun Aug 26, 2018 11:00 am

There are some very good guitarists that actually get a little peeved (and, rightfully so) when us "casual" pickers "assume" (and, you know what those letters stand for) that what we just heard was pure innate talent that was "given from above." Most of them work their tails off to develop those skills.

However, with Richard - youz guys are perfectly correct. Dig this - he's so advanced now days - he doesn't even practice. He just plays!

He and his wife, Julie, were staying with me many years ago when they had come up to Columbus to play at one of our OFGC Pickin' Parties. It was around 10 am on a Sunday morning (early for geetar pickers that "bring money home in a jar" (lol) and I've already started this trick I used to use to get Richard and Robert Anderson up early: I start frying a pound of bacon and point a fan down the stairs to my family room - where they were sleeping... LOL

I, also, grab one of their guitars and start butchering some finger stye meanderings - which I know will drive them nuts - and, they will come up into the kitchen with me just to shut me up. Well, this one morning I was working my ass off and getting nowhere on this simple little Merle lick in Down South Blues. Richard came staggering up the 5 stairs from the family room to the kitchen wiping sleep out of his eyes and mentioned, "You know - that was the first tune my father taught me." Dying to know, I queried, "How old were you?"

"FIVE!!!!!"

Enough said!!!!
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Re: It's Back! Richard Smith at 11 with Chet!

Postby Doug Working » Mon Aug 27, 2018 12:21 pm

Pretty astounding, when you think about it. Being so good or advanced that you don't even need to practice! What I would give for that!!

And starting on your first tune with a Merle lick??? Kind of staggers my imagination...temptation, really to get jealous!! However the good LORD would not be pleased with that attitude.

But I've often thought about it. Supernatural endowment is really the only explanation for such enormous, prodigious talent and ability on any musical instrument, guitar included.

I've often watched with mouth dropped (and you can find vids on Y'tube) of kids three or four years old, playing PERFECT piano concertos by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven etc, and you know that it takes the concert masters DECADES of hard work and sweat to get to that level!! So these children achieve in one or two years what would normally take twenty even thirty?? There is only one explanation, and it is not of this earth. Consider that those children are barely old enough to probably have finished potty training!! How does one explain that???

I often think of young Chet, filling an old beat up guitar with dirt, dragging it along the ground by a string. Or pulling the wires out of a screen door to replace a busted guitar string.

But I believe Chet, unlike Richard, had to put quite a bit of work into it. I know that he would practice in the boy's room in his old school for better acoustics when the other kids were out for recess.

As for me, the work has payed off, albeit sloooooooooooooooooooooowly. We're talkin' decades. And I know my place. I'm "decent" on the instrument, but I will never come within a thousand miles of Chet, or protégées like Richard, Ray Cumins, and on and on the list goes. I play because I like the sound of the instrument, and because I Iove Chet.

Maybe even someday, God willing, I'll make a Christmas CD. I'd like something for close friends, and my family, especially my grand-babies, to remember me by. I'd like them to say (at my memorial) "Oh! He played really pretty!"

And surely others will say "I didn't know he played guitar!"
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Re: It's Back! Richard Smith at 11 with Chet!

Postby Doug Working » Mon Aug 27, 2018 12:34 pm

Just had another thought about prodigies. Not related to music, but a prodigy is a prodigy.

Anybody here play chess? I love the game. The story goes about Bobby Fischer that when he was no more than five or six, his dad played chess. Fischer could barely peer over the top of the board as he stood there, yet he was suggesting moves AND beating his dad from the first times he barely learned the rules of the game! And I can tell you from experience, chess isn't easy!

Not unless your name happens to be Bobby Fischer.

So prodigies in all fields, music or otherwise stagger our imaginations!
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Re: It's Back! Richard Smith at 11 with Chet!

Postby emjaybee94 » Wed Aug 29, 2018 7:05 am

The first time I met Richard was when he was 10 years old, at a John Knowles seminar weekend in London. He came with his Dad, Doug, and we were all amazed at his ability even then. I think he had been playing from the age of 6, but how you assimilate that amount of knowledge in 4 years is way beyond my comprehension. I can only think he must have played guitar in a previous life. To be able to dissect Chet's style just from listening to records is nothing short of miraculous. It took me 30 years to work out some of Chet's moves and I still don't play them well.

Regards
Mike
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Re: It's Back! Richard Smith at 11 with Chet!

Postby DagerRande » Wed Aug 29, 2018 8:13 am

Mike, before the Internet, tablature, DVD's, and so many instructional materials, those of us who played Chet's style had no other option but to use our ear. This is why there were so few of us playing it in those early days. Now, when I attend the convention, I find myself surrounded by others who play much of Chet's music and I've learned that the average listener doesn't care HOW it was learned. I find myself in a very unrecognized category these days. If there were a forum or contest where the competitors were on stage in front of an audience and were presented with a recording of a brand new song and were expected to learn and reproduce what they heard, I know I would do well in that scenario. However, when it was all over and the winner decided, the audience would be asleep!!! :D
Rande Dager

We are all capable of doing more than we think we can!
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Re: It's Back! Richard Smith at 11 with Chet!

Postby emjaybee94 » Wed Aug 29, 2018 9:21 am

We were born too early Rande :|
Mike
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Re: It's Back! Richard Smith at 11 with Chet!

Postby DagerRande » Wed Aug 29, 2018 1:20 pm

Mike, for many reasons I'm glad I was born when I was. I can still use that same ear to learn new songs while so many are asking for the tab. I also feel that I came through a time when music offered a lot more to build my present "data base" of ideas than it does today. All of my new arrangements use ideas that don't seem to exist in today's music :-(
Rande Dager

We are all capable of doing more than we think we can!
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