Pete Seeger's brief history of the guitar, 2006

“Did you ever stop to think of it? The guitar came out of Asia, Spain brought it to Mexico, USA fought a war with Mexico and got Texas and California, and it also got the guitar—and the guitar got us. It was Africans in the South that worked out this African way of playing it, and Merle Travis picked it up—they call it Travis picking, but Merle said, ‘Oh, this is the way black people play the guitar. I just picked it up from them.’ In other words, your thumb gets the basic beat, and your fingers get the offbeat. It’s all around the world now.”

Outtake from a feature published in Acoustic Guitar, February 2007. Included with the interview, conducted last summer at Seeger's home in Beacon, New York, are several photos by JPR, including the one above. More photos are posted here.