Topic: Early picks, thumbpicks

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I've been wondering for some time if anyone knew what kind of thumbpick Lemon Jefferson would have been using on his recordings.  You can see it on his thumb in the one studio shot there is of him.  Were there celluloid picks at that early date?  I don't think plastic had been invented yet.  Of course, metal thumbpicks would probably have been available.  Does anyone know when non-metal, non-bone, non-tortoiseshell thumbpicks and flatpicks became commercially available?
All best,
Johnm

[Rivers]

Great question, I'd vaguely wondered myself. I thought Sears catalogs might be a good place to start.

There definitely were celluloid straight picks before Lemon's time. Browsing the catalog pages on this site turns up several: http://www.oldpicks.com/home.php

[dj]

The 1927 Wurlitzer catalog at the site Rivers references lists an "imitation tortoise shell or white" thumbpick.  So they were around in Lemon's day.

[dj]

From an essay called "The Material Culture Of Thumbpicking" at http://tonyataylor.weebly.com/uploads/2/0/1/5/2015746/mct.pdf:

"Around 1918, a young Muhlenberg County musician named Kennedy Jones had played his thumb raw, hitting the bass notes on his guitar for hours while playing a dance. The next morning he went down to a Central City music store, and found a box of thumbpicks, at that time used exclusively for Hawaiian music, then a fad. As he later recounted to musician and music historian Mike Seeger, Jones told the owner, ?Hand me down a guitar. I?m not gonna run off with it.? ?So he handed it down to me, and I started pickin? with it . . . . just a thumb and finger, that?s all I used. I couldn?t do a good job with it to start with, but it gave me a good idea that I could. I bought the whole box..."

[Johnm]

Thanks very much for the information, Rivers and dj.  That white thumbpick is what Lemon was using.
All best,
Johnm