Hi all,
Apropos of Phil's starting this thread I listened to the four Gussie Nesbit tracks on the JSP set, "The Guitar Evangelists, Volume 2". There is a lot of variety in them--he was not a musical one-trick-pony by any means. Certainly the most striking of his tracks, if only for its oddity is his version of "Motherless Children". He plays it with a slide, in Vestapol, and gets a really odd, bi-tonal sound by playing his bass, alternating and brushing his open strings, while at the same time playing his melody and singing the song with a home pitch, or "do" located at the fourth fret of his first string. The result is that his chordal back-up and his melody are in two different keys. It's vaguely reminiscent of Kelly Harrell's version of "Wild Bill Jones", where he sings the song in F while Henry Whitter accompanies him in B flat. Gussie Nesbit's sound is stranger, though, because it is completely self-contained, he's playing and singing it all. The cut is definitely worth seeking out, as are all of Nesbit's recordings.
Incidentally, without having heard him before, I'd always assumed that Gussie Nesbit was a woman, since the name Gussie is almost always given to women, at least in the States.
All best,
Johnm
