It just does not seem like I started playing the banjo seventy six years ago. My mother showed me how to play Old John and Shortnin' Bread around 1945. I was using thumb and one finger like she and and my grandfather did. I listened to Snuffy Jenkins and the WIS Radio Hillbillies on radio station WIS, Columbia, SC maybe five days per week but I didn't know how he was getting that sound. Then I saw him at Canadys school auditorium one night and he was using thumb and two fingers. That was it!
The very next time I got to go to Walterboro, I bought another finger pick; didn't know what to do with it but I knew now that I was on the right track.
I was on the front porch with my banjo one Sunday morning waiting for my parents to go to church when I stumbled into a backward roll or rotation with thumb and two fingers. WOW! That was it! It sounded similar to Snuffy.