Sue Foley Teaches the Guitar Stylings of Maybelle Carter and Elizabeth Cotten

Sue Foley is both a guitarist and a scholar, and she was kind enough to create this exclusive lesson, breaking down key techniques from some of the musicians she celebrates on One Guitar Woman.

In Example 1, Foley demonstrates the Carter scratch, a technique pioneered by Maybelle Carter in which the guitarist plays single-note melodies on the bass strings while adding chordal accents on the upper strings. “It’s a kind of counterintuitive way to think about playing melodies on guitar,” Foley says, “which gives us this real richness.”

As she mentions in this interview, it took her quite some time to decode exactly what Carter was playing on “Lonesome Homesick Blues” (similar to Example 2). Eventually, something clicked. “Usually, you can just go online and learn a song,” Foley says, “but in this case, nobody was playing it right—at least not solo and not the way Maybelle Carter did. I’m pretty sure this is the correct method: it’s in an open tuning, either open E or D, and played with a flatpick.”

Elizabeth Cotten’s fingerpicking style was deeply idiosyncratic, full of unexpected rhythmic and harmonic nuances. Foley is particularly drawn to those quirks, like the subtle phrasing shift in Cotten’s “Oh Babe It Ain’t No Lie,” the inspiration for Example 3. “She draws out the chords in unexpected places,” Foley explains. “I just listen and try my best to adopt her style. But it’s impossible to sound just like Elizabeth Cotten—she only sounds like her.”