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It’s the 4th of July, Independence Day here in the USA. To celebrate, here is a clip of Chet Atkins playing John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.

Born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1919, Jackie Washington began singing at events in the black community in his home town at age 5. He and his brothers sang four part harmony and soon were singing in nightclubs around southern Ontario. After learning to play the guitar, Jackie began to appear with visiting big bands like Duke Ellington, Glen Miller and Benny Goodman. He worked outside of music business in the 1940s and fifties, at a day job, but still made occasional appearances with jazz groups. Twenty years later Jackie was discovered by the folk music scene and was adopted as Canada’s resident blues man, a complete misnomer. He has been playing his repertoire of 1,300 or so jazz standards and novelty tunes at folk festivals and clubs ever since. This year, at the age of 89, Jackie is booked for several festivals in Canada. his 84th year in show business. His recent recordings can be found at Borealis records.

This is a clip from a bio film I Want To Be Happy made in 2006. There is a short sample of his singing and playing and Jackie tells the story of his first guitar.

Libba Cotton was working at a seasonal, Christmastime, job in a department store in Washington D.C. when she discovered a lost child and returned her to her mother. That child was Peggy Seeger, sister of Mike and Pete and daughter of musicologist Charles Seeger and composer Ruth Crawfor Seeger. Cotton went to work for the Seeger family as a cook and housekeeper when her department store job was finished and was soon discovered playing one of her original compositions “Freight Train” on a guitar belonging to the Seeger family. With the Seegers’ encouragement Cotton went on to perform and record her songs, starting a new career which lasted the rest of her long life. I saw Elizabeth Cotton perform at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1986, when she was 92 years old.

Cotton played left handed on a guitar strung right handed. She had taught herself to play as a child in Chapel Hill North Carolina and made up her own songs. Her playing style is similar to that of Merle Travis and Chet Atkins but upside down. In folk music circles this alternating bass fingerstyle is sometimes referred to as “Cotton Picking.” (upside down not required)