Who Greatly Influenced Your Acoustic Guitar Playing?

[Rogerblair]

Link Wray was the first.

[ChapinFan]

Originally Posted by dmckean44

Fretkillr
I'd probably still be electric only without all his Youtube uploads a decade ago.

Youtube took him offline for some strange reason a few years ago, didn't they?
Did they ever put him back online?

I'm going to add one that you might expect, considering my moniker and all:

Harry Chapin.

He's not well known as a great guitarist, but I loved his song "Corey's Coming."

It has a great pick to it, and I wanted to play it the same way. I found a Tab book called: :"The authentic picking style of Harry Chapin" -- I didn't even know what a TAB was when I bought it. But in it was the secret to playing Corey's Coming. Man, it took me forever to teach my stupid fingers how to play it. Then suddenly, the muscle memory kicked in and man, did it open up new ways to play the guitar after that!

Here's Harry doing it in Germany:

[Glennwillow]

I think just about any guitar player whose music I liked has influenced me. I have learned from so many people it's too long a list to even write down.

My tastes are fairly eclectic -- I learned from Peter, Paul & Mary; I learned from the Beatles. I learned from Simon & Garfunkel; I learned from the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash. I learned from John Denver, Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot, James Taylor -- I learned from Eric Johnson, Andy Timmons, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton. I learned from Martin Taylor and Tommy Emmanuel.

The lists goes on and on for me.

- Glenn

[Ameridane]

Mark Kozelek
Pierre Bensusan
Luka Bloom

[Twinpeaksbirds]

The musicians who inspire me the most to play the acoustic guitar are:

Reverend Gary Davis
Charley Patton
Mississippi Fred McDowell
Robert Johnson
Son House

and... although I can't play a lick of jazz:

Django Reinhardt

[gigmaster]

I guess my biggest influences have been Jim Croce, James Taylor, John Denver, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, and Merl Haggard. I really like fingerpicking, and well-written songs that say something, or convey a lot of emotion. IMHO, that's what guitar playing is all about. You don't play Acoustic Guitar...you live it.

[Samogitian]

Interesting, I see most of you mention prominent musicians, mostly older generation. Many of these guys created and performed some really good music, but here's a thing - majority if not all of them play in a context of a band. I started learning my guitar well within the "Youtube generation" and before I even bought my first one I watched a bunch of videos and saw these guys playing arrangements of well known songs on their acoustic guitars with solo, rhythm, bass - all at the same time, they called it "fingerstyle" and it was awesome. From that moment on I decided I'm gonna play fingerstyle.

So from my pragmatic perspective my influencers are Igor Presnyakov, Kelly Valleau, Adam Rafferty, Dave Niskin

[Calcifer]

I'd listened to a lot of Beatles, Marc Bolan, and David Bowie, but when I first heard Steve Howe's "Mood for a Day", I dropped everything and bought the first guitar I could lay my hands on....lol.

[mmcs1202]

Originally Posted by multimutts

John Denver (the intro to 'Poems, Prayers & Promises is the reason I ever picked up a guitar in the first place)

Gordon Lightfoot

Jim Croce

Yes, the same song intro was inspirational for me, also. John Denver was largely influential for me when I first began playing, partly because we had his albums around the house -combined with his songbooks with chords being among the few at the local library that included diagrammed chords. I spent many hours with a tape player, listening/rewinding/listening again -until I could play those songs exactly like he did. So I credit him for my basic fingerpicking style.
Other influences include Emmylou Harris, Dan Fogelberg, Gordon Lightfoot, then Led Zeppelin, 80's rock bands -too many to list- and (later) Elliott Smith, Christie Moore, Glenn Phillips, Radiohead, Chris Cornell, Townes Van Zandt...and countless amazingly talented artists on youtube.