It wasn't so much that I would ask them how to play. A lot of the stuff I knew from old records.... What they usually talked to me about was how to conduct myself as a person. They tried to keep me away from all the things they went through. They tried to keep my nose clean, and they succeeded pretty good - Jerry Ricks, on time spent with the Old Ones, interview in Blues Review No. 46, April 1999
Signed up for a course on Udemy called Traditional Acoustic Blues Guitar just over a year ago, and this was the first song on it. Hadn't played anything quite like it so it took a good while to get a degree of fluency and freedom with it, but starting to think I can move to the second song soon. :-)
Cheers guys. Aye it musta been a hell of a lot of work to put the whole course together - nightmarish I would imagine! I think when I started I may have only known the one song in standard tuning (Lightnin' Hopkins in E) so there was some good fundamental info for me before it came to the first song too. I took his advice and kept listening to Mance's version and changed several things from how he does it on the course to be more like how I hear Mance doing it, which will no doubt be as much of an ongoing process as I wish to make it. :-)
Oh that's really sad news. Thanks for letting me know. I had corresponded with him via e-mail when I signed up for his course and had actually e-mailed him when I put that clip up to let him hear how I was progressing.