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Every once in a while some self taught musician comes along with an entirely different way of doing things and manages to make something of it. Kenneth Ray Carllile is one of those. He taught himself to play the dobro, starting at the age of eight, when his sister won one from some kind of sales promotion. Said sister got mad and hid the slide so little Kenny learned to play it with his thumb. Carllile became a professional guitarist but he played his guitar lying flat in his lap and fingered the strings with his left thumb and fingers, pressing down n them like typewriter keys.

There are only a couple of clips available of Thumbs Carllile playing, although there are several recordings floating around the internet, some of them very sophisticated arrangements of jazz standards. Here is one of him playing in the house band on the television show “Ozark Jubilee.” It appears that Richard Nixon is playing drums.

Chet started as a young child, playing first ukulele, then fiddle and finally guitar. He imitated the playing of Merle Travis, who he heard on the radio and taught himself to play even more complex arrangements. After working in several bands on live radio broadcasts including in Red Foley’s band on the Grand Old Opry, Chet began producing records for RCA Victor in Nashville. He was largely responsible for the “Nashville Sound,” which Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson rebelled against in the 1980s.

Here is a television appearance by Chet playing his instrumental arrangement of Don McClean’s “Vincent.” Chet takes this simple and haunting melody and adds harmonic colors that bring out it’s surprising beauty. His fingers never leave his hands, although you would think they’d have to.

Everyone of a certain age remembers watching Hee Haw, which began on CBS in 1969 and lives on in syndication forever. The two hosts of the show were country singer Buck Owens and singer/guitarist Roy Clark. Clark’s versatility on guitar and banjo are often overlooked because of his association with this show and it’s, um, rural sense of humor. The producers of Hee Haw were inspired by Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In and the structure of the comedy sketches were built on that model. The result was quite different.

Here is a clip fo Roy Clark playing Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” on guitar. This is from a Hee Haw episode and there is a bit of Hee Haw humor tacked on the end. Watch Clark’s face. When he is playing a difficult passage his tongue sticks out. This is a sign of high concentration.