Just learned what the "Carter Scratch" is..

[rick-slo]

From the few videos I have seen most of the time the upper strings were just strummed but she would sometimes play a single note melody line on the upper strings with the index finger.

[vintage40s]

Originally Posted by mattwood

That's not what she says in the video. Look about 16:15 minutes in and she states the fingers play the melody and the thumb plays the rhythm.

That's what she clearly says at 16:15 for that song, and that's what she obviously does. Looks and sounds like regular alternating base thumb picking.
Now at 3:35, Jimmy Henderson shows what must be the "scratch". It is using the thumb pick to play melody with the fingers strumming (scratching) down and up between notes, bump ditty. The way most of us learned Wildwood Flower if we didn't flat pick it first. It helps if the melody is on the lower strings so the thumb and fingers are not working on the same strings.

[1Charlie]

One element in the appeal of the "Scratch" is that Maybelle played a 1920's Loar-era Gibson L-5, perhaps the most coveted archtop ever made.

[rpguitar]

I enjoy and respect the traditions of early country music, and even have a guitar that's a clone of Maybelle's.

The "Carter scratch" is one of those things that a geographically and culturally isolated demographic of musicians thought was incredibly unique, and amusingly presumed that they invented. This is not offensive of course, just eye-roll inducing.

Spanish flamenco guitarists have played melody with their thumbs (pulgar) while strumming down with their other fingers (rasgueo) for basically ever. It was not something new in the 1920s.

Of course it's cool that a rural American female guitarist spontaneously adopted this technique, and that is noteworthy, particularly for the type of music and on a steel stringed archtop guitar. But we should also put it into perspective a bit.

[pdxstrummer]

Originally Posted by paulzoom

She may have mispoke or Wikepedia has it wrong:

Carter Family picking, also known as the thumb brush, the Carter lick, the church lick, or the Carter scratch,[2] is a style of fingerstyle guitar named after Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family's distinctive style of rhythm guitar in which the melody is played on the bass strings, usually low E, A, and D while rhythm strumming continues above, on the treble strings, G, B, and high E. This often occurs during the break.[3] The style bears similarity to the frailing style of banjo playing and is the rhythm Bill Monroe adapted for bluegrass music two decades later.[2]

With this technique, Carter, who "was among the first" to use it as such,[4] "helped to turn the guitar into a lead instrument".[5] It is unclear how Maybelle developed her then-unique style.


This also confirms that the melody is on the bass strings:

Tremendously interesting! Thank you for posting.

My Daddy's people--Virginia farmers-- all had a Saturday string band get together, including the bootleg whiskey. It sounds like a cliche, but it's all true.

Anyway, when we visited when I was a boy (think mid 60s) I would often sit in. They played what I now know as the Carter scratch with a flat pick, although they just called it "pickin." Although as the night wore on, and the gentleman drank their "tea" (the whiskey was served in Tea cups, perhaps with a nod to the ladies and children present) the picks would often wind up on the floor and I'd see just raw picking and strumming with bare fingers.

I always backed up on rhythm, since it was easy for me: three chords and the truth!

They called it, "Making Music."

This video brought back good memories!

[archerscreek]

Originally Posted by rpguitar

I enjoy and respect the traditions of early country music, and even have a guitar that's a clone of Maybelle's.

The "Carter scratch" is one of those things that a geographically and culturally isolated demographic of musicians thought was incredibly unique, and amusingly presumed that they invented. This is not offensive of course, just eye-roll inducing.

Spanish flamenco guitarists have played melody with their thumbs (pulgar) while strumming down with their other fingers (rasgueo) for basically ever. It was not something new in the 1920s.

Of course it's cool that a rural American female guitarist spontaneously adopted this technique, and that is noteworthy, particularly for the type of music and on a steel stringed archtop guitar. But we should also put it into perspective a bit.

No need to roll your eyes. Haha. From the sources I've seen, Maybelle Carter frequently cited the influence of Spanish flamenco players on her own style. I think she even travelled to Mexico to watch and learn.

[rpguitar]

That's quite interesting. I wonder where she heard or saw Spanish music while she was learning guitar in profoundly rural Virginia in the early 1920s? She traveled to Mexico with the Carter family in later years to broadcast from XERA, the 500 kW Mexican radio station, but that was not until after she developed her style. I guess I'll need to look for those citations you mention.

[PHJim]

When I was beginning to play the guitar and take an interest in folk music circa 1960, my friend Jim Cox and I went to Toronto to meet up with a fellow named Ted Schaffer (sp?) who worked with Jim's dad. Ted was a folkie who was working with some other folkies to organise the first Mariposa Folk Festival and he agreed to give two teenagers some hints about folk music. He also turned us on to Sing Out! magazine. Here's a link to a photo of Ted Schaffer with Ian & Sylvia and Pete Seeger sitting on the floor of Ted's living room.

He taught Jim up-picking on the 5 string banjo and showed me the basics of the Carter Scratch, using the thumb for melody and the index finger to fill in the holes by brushing chords. Since I found the index awkward, I used the back of my bird finger for the down and up stroke.
I still use this method around the house, but usually use a flat pick to play the same notes using what Woody Guthrie called the "church lick".
In the opening song of the video above, Maybelle is using a flat pick to play a swing type rhythm. She occasionally used a flat pick, especially if she wanted to play some melody on the treble strings. She did this for You Are My Flower.