Johnny Cash told him: “Well, that’s real good, but that’s too good for one of my records. Can you play about half as much and play it on single strings?”
Norman Blake did just that. He played half as much, on single strings. He continued recording with Johnny Cash for the next forty years.
This interaction — Cash asking Blake to reduce, to simplify, to serve the music rather than demonstrate the technique — became the foundational principle of Blake’s entire musical philosophy. “I’m more interested in the music and the tone than I am the licks,” he has said. “I want the licks to be subtle and say what they’re gonna say. And I want to put in the right things and leave out the wrong things. Just making a lick is not my goal.”
Norman Blake played on Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline. He played dobro on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken. He played on Joan Baez’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” He appeared on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, which won the Grammy for Album of the Year. He played for Kris Kristofferson and John Hartford and Doc Watson and Tony Rice.
He did all of this while refusing to play more than the song required. He did it while playing vintage 12-fret acoustic guitars that most of his contemporaries considered obsolete. He did it while filing and beveling his flatpicks by hand to the specific shape he preferred. He did it from a house in the Georgian hinterlands where he has lived almost his entire life.
“I’d rather give an honest performance than a professional one,” he said.
He has given both, consistently, for sixty years.
Background: Chattanooga, Sulphur Springs, and the Philosophy of Leaving Out the Wrong Things
Norman L. Blake was born March 10, 1938, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and grew up in Sulphur Springs, Alabama. His first exposure to music was through the radio — the Carter Family, the Skillet Lickers, Roy Acuff, and the Monroe Brothers were what the radio delivered to rural Alabama in the 1940s, and these were his musical foundations.
He learned guitar at age eleven or twelve. Mandolin came shortly after, then dobro and fiddle. Guitar and mandolin remained his primary instruments throughout his career. He was a multi-instrumentalist from the beginning, but the guitar and mandolin were the tools he returned to consistently.
He left school at sixteen to play music professionally — the same decision as Roy Buchanan, James Burton, and others in this series, the decision of someone who knows what he is and doesn’t see the point of waiting. His early professional work included county dance bands (where he played fiddle and dobro), radio broadcasts with the Dixieland Drifters, and a stint in the Army as a radio operator in the Panama Canal Zone, where he formed a band called the Kobbe Mountaineers.
After the Army, he moved to Nashville and became a studio musician. He met June Carter, which led to his connection with Johnny Cash. The specific interaction that defined his approach: Blake arrived for a session with Cash and played dobro on the song “Bad News.” After the first take, Cash said it was too good — he wanted Blake to play half as much, on single strings. Blake adjusted. He stayed with Cash for forty years.
The decade of Cash touring and recording established his professional credentials. Then came the folk revival work that is his most celebrated contribution to American music history: Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline (1969), John Hartford’s Aereo-Plain (1971), Joan Baez’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (1971), the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken (1972), and Doc Watson’s Elementary, Doctor Watson!
His first solo album, Home in Sulphur Springs, appeared in 1972. He was thirty-four years old. His subsequent solo career — now spanning fifty years of recordings with his wife Nancy Blake (cellist, guitarist, mandolinist) and various collaborators — has produced a body of work that is consistently celebrated for its honesty, its rootedness in the American traditional music he loves, and its refusal to compromise.
“I didn’t have a concrete vision to go off on my own,” he told Martin Guitar. “I kind of fell into it. I didn’t plan on a career of making solo records, but making music all these years is something I am really proud of.”
He collaborated with Tony Rice on two albums (Blake and Rice and Blake and Rice 2). He appeared on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack (2000) and on Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s Raising Sand (2007), which won five Grammy Awards. He and Nancy received four Grammy nominations for their recordings together.
He is still performing and recording. He was, as of the Premier Guitar article, playing a 1928 Martin 00-45 — his wife’s road guitar that he had acquired. He is still on a tone quest. “I don’t like the hunt, but I like finding that sound.”
Tone note: Johnny Cash told him his playing was too good for one of Cash’s records and asked him to play half as much. Blake adjusted and stayed for forty years. The willingness to reduce, to serve, to play less when less is what the music needs — this is the foundational professional virtue that distinguishes accompanists from soloists, and genuine musicians from mere players. Blake could do both. Cash correctly identified which one was needed.
The Rig: Norman Blake’s Guitars, Amps & Gear
Guitars: A Lifetime of 12-Fret Searching
Norman Blake’s guitar relationship is unlike any other in this series — he is not a one-guitar player, not even close. He buys and sells vintage guitars continuously, choosing instruments whose voices best meet the task at hand rather than maintaining a single primary instrument. The Fretboard Journal described him as someone who “avidly buys and sells vintage guitars, never sticking to any particular one for long.”
The consistent through-line: his preference for 12-fret guitars. Most contemporary acoustic guitars have the neck joining the body at the 14th fret; older guitars (pre-1934 on many Martins, and many Gibsons of the 1920s and 1930s) have the neck joining at the 12th fret. Blake’s preference for 12-fret instruments — unusual enough that it defines him as much as any specific guitar does — is a considered aesthetic choice. He has articulated the reason: “I’ve always maintained that the fact that it joins the body at the octave — on the strongest harmonic point there at the 12th fret — has something to do with it.”
The 12-fret join also changes the bridge’s position on the top: with the neck joining further down, the bridge sits closer to the center of the top rather than toward the lower bout. This affects the top’s resonance patterns — the bridge drives the top from a different position, producing a different acoustic response. Blake’s assertion that this produces a “bigger tone and more open sound” is his subjective experience, but the acoustic physics support the claim that different bridge positions produce different tonal character.
The Premier Guitar Rig Rundown Guitar List
The Premier Guitar rig rundown for Norman Blake’s album Brushwood: Songs & Stories provided the most comprehensive single-source list of his active instruments, confirmed in the article’s gear section:
- 1907 Maurer — A very early guitar from one of the predecessors of the Larson Brothers; pre-Martin-dominance-era American guitar building
- 1928 Martin 00-45 — A small-bodied (00 size, smaller than a dreadnought) Martin in the top-of-the-line 45 style with its distinctive abalone trim and rosewood back and sides; his wife Nancy’s road guitar that Blake acquired
- 1933 Gibson L-Century — A Gibson archtop guitar from the 1930s
- 1937 Gibson J-35 — Gibson’s more affordable flat-top dreadnought from the late 1930s
- 1938 Martin 000-42 — A 000 (smaller than dreadnought) Martin in the 42 style
- 1941 Martin 000-21 — A 000 Martin in the plainer 21 style
- 1960s Yamaha FG-160 — A vintage Japanese guitar; a notably humble instrument among such a collection
Key Guitars Across His Career
The Whiskey Before Breakfast D-18s (Martin dreadnoughts, early career):
Acoustic Guitar documented: “Norman Blake recorded his early solo albums — including the flatpicking showcases Whiskey Before Breakfast and Live at McCabe’s — on Martin dreadnoughts.” His earliest significant recording work was done on dreadnought guitars, particularly Martin D-18 models. The song “D-18 Song (Thank You, Mr. Martin)” references this period directly — “Cause once again this old guitar helped me through the night / I’m mighty grateful to you, you know how to make ’em right / I said thank you Mr. Martin I’m alright.”
A specific D-18 — a 1936 example — is confirmed as the guitar on the front cover of the Whiskey Before Breakfast album, sold by Blake to a road-trip companion who went looking for it specifically after seeing it on the cover. The guitar changed hands for the cost of a personal loan and some additional cash — an informal transaction entirely appropriate to the world Norman Blake inhabits.
The 1934 Martin D-18H:
Acoustic Guitar confirmed his use of a 1934 Martin D-18H throughout the 1980s. The “H” designation indicates herringbone purfling — the decorative trim that Martin used on their top instruments through the pre-war period and that Tony Rice’s D-28 also features. This was his primary instrument for much of the period when his flatpicking reputation was most actively developing.
The 1929 Gibson Nick Lucas Special:
Wikipedia confirmed: Blake is “also well known is his devotion to 12-fret guitars, including Martin 00s, 000s, D18s, D28s, and Gibsons, like his 1929 12-fret Nick Lucas special.” The Nick Lucas Special was Gibson’s signature model for the 1920s and 1930s entertainer Nick Lucas — a small-bodied, deep-bodied guitar with a 12-fret neck join that produces the specific open, bass-forward sound of a 12-fret guitar at a relatively compact body size. Blake switching from dreadnoughts to the Nick Lucas Special represents his move toward smaller, 12-fret instruments.
The 1934 Blake & Rice Guitar:
The Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum documented: “the only guitars he mentions are the 1934 D-28 (the beat up one he is holding on Blake & Rice I).” His collaboration with Tony Rice produced one of the celebrated images in bluegrass guitar — the two great flatpickers, each holding a battered vintage Martin.
The Randy Wood Custom:
A forum member documented seeing and playing “the Randy Wood custom you got from me” — a custom guitar built by Randy Wood, a Nashville luthier known for high-quality acoustic guitar work. Blake’s relationship with Wood confirms his engagement with skilled contemporary luthiers alongside his vintage guitar collecting.
The Wayne Henderson Custom (000, 12-fret):
Martin’s blog documented: “A few years after commissioning famed luthier Wayne Henderson to build him an extra deep 000 body with a 12 fret (to the body) neck, Blake began working with Martin Guitar in 2002 on the 000-28 Norman Blake Signature Model.” Wayne Henderson is a Virginia luthier of legendary reputation — there is typically a multi-year waiting list for his guitars. Blake’s commission from Henderson was the specific prototype that informed the subsequent Martin collaboration.
Martin 000-28 Norman Blake Signature (2004):
The result of Blake’s collaboration with Martin Guitar, released in 2004, is one of the more distinctive signature models in Martin’s history because it combined specifications that had never existed in a single production guitar before. Martin documented: “In joining a 12 fret neck to a 14-fret 000 body style but with a short 24.9″ scale, Blake found a unique combination. Custom tall, wide frets on the black African ebony fingerboard provide a similar feel to the bar frets that Blake prefers along with a smaller 00 sized soundhole to enhance both bass response and dynamic range.”
The specifications break down to:
- 14-fret 000 body size (not the traditional 12-fret 000 body, which is smaller)
- 12-fret neck join (so the neck meets the body at the 12th fret despite the body being the 14-fret size)
- Short 24.9″ scale length (shorter than the standard Martin 25.4″)
- Smaller 00-size soundhole (on the larger 000 body)
- Tall, wide custom frets (approximating the feel of bar frets)
- No signature on the fingerboard (Blake’s preference — he didn’t want his name on the instrument)
Blake refused to include his signature on the fingerboard. Martin’s documentation noted: “In keeping with his humble nature, Blake preferred not to include his signature on the fingerboard, which had been the standard for guitars in the Signature Collection.” The man who has spent his career arguing for the music over the ego refused to put his name on his signature guitar.
Tone note: He refused to sign his signature guitar. The instrument that bears his name doesn’t have his name on it. This is either the most characteristically modest thing any guitarist in this series has done, or it’s a principled statement about who should be noticed in music — the music itself, not the player. Both interpretations are correct. Both are vintage Norman Blake.
Additional Documented Instruments
- John Arnold custom guitars — Fretboard Journal confirmed Blake “speaks highly of the guitars he plays by John Arnold”
- Santa Cruz Guitar Co. — Also confirmed in Fretboard Journal as a maker he speaks highly of
- Altman custom guitar — Fretboard Journal: “He plays a new guitar made for him by Altman”
- Martin Ditson 111 (1920s model) — Recently acquired, as mentioned in the Martin blog: “I recently got a 15-year-old Martin Ditson 111. They were originally fan braced and made for gut strings”
- Dobro and slide instruments — Used for specific recordings; non-resonator slide (lap steel, raised-nut guitar in Hawaiian tuning)
Complete Guitar List (Key Instruments)
- Various Martin dreadnoughts (D-18, D-28) — early career — Whiskey Before Breakfast era; 1936 D-18 on album cover
- 1934 Martin D-18H — 1980s primary; herringbone purfling
- 1929 Gibson Nick Lucas Special (12-fret) — Key transition instrument; Blake’s move to 12-fret smaller bodies
- 1934 Martin D-28 (battered) — Blake & Rice album cover guitar
- Randy Wood custom — Nashville luthier; custom work
- Wayne Henderson custom 000 (12-fret, extra deep body) — The commission that informed the Martin signature
- Martin 000-28 Norman Blake Signature (2004) — Custom combination of 12-fret neck, 14-fret 000 body, 24.9″ scale, smaller soundhole; no signature on fingerboard
- John Arnold custom guitars — Multiple examples
- Santa Cruz Guitar Co. models — Various
- Altman custom guitar — Recent addition
- Active collection (Premier Guitar rig rundown): 1907 Maurer, 1928 Martin 00-45, 1933 Gibson L-Century, 1937 Gibson J-35, 1938 Martin 000-42, 1941 Martin 000-21, 1960s Yamaha FG-160
- Martin Ditson 111 (1920s, recent acquisition) — Fan-braced, gut-string design
Amps: Microphones and Nothing Else
Like Doc Watson and Tony Rice, Norman Blake performs and records acoustically — through microphones rather than pickups. His recording setup, as documented in the Premier Guitar article about Brushwood: Songs & Stories, is explicitly simple: “We used all Neumann microphones. A U 87 on his vocals, and Norman brought some really old mics — two Neumann guitar mics, those pencil condenser mics. It was a pretty simple setup. We used a Universal Audio 1176 compressor and some really cool preamps. We just did a little X pattern with the microphones on the guitar and close-miked his vocal with that U 87.”
The recording philosophy: live vocal and guitar simultaneously, minimal processing, no separation of the acoustic sources. “I sang all that stuff in one take,” Blake said. “I’ve always felt the old bluesmen had the right approach to that. You sing off the guitar, and you play off the singing.”
One take. Live vocal and guitar simultaneously. Neumann microphones. Universal Audio compression. That’s the complete recording chain of an artist whose most celebrated recordings span fifty years.
Pedals & Signal Chain: No Pedals
No signal chain. Guitar → microphone → recording or PA. Norman Blake’s performing signal chain is the same as Doc Watson’s and Tony Rice’s: the acoustic guitar’s natural output captured by microphone.
The consistency across three consecutive guitarists in this series — Watson, Rice, Blake — is not coincidence. It reflects the specific values of the traditional acoustic music tradition they all inhabit: the instrument’s natural acoustic character is the sound, and any electronic processing between the instrument and the listener is a compromise of that character.
Strings, Picks & Setup
Strings — Custom-Mixed Gauges:
Acoustic Guitar documented Blake’s unusual approach to strings: “He orders strings individually, mixing gauges to find the set that highlights the features of each specific guitar. Though the gauges have varied over the years and by instrument, he typically uses lighter gauges on high strings (.011 for high E) and heavier sizes on low strings (.060 for low E).”
This is the opposite of the usual mixed-gauge approach. Standard light-gauge sets taper from lighter treble strings (for bending ease) to heavier bass strings (for tone and volume). Blake uses a similar principle but with his specific gauge preferences: a .011 high E (slightly heavier than the .010 of many light sets) and a .060 low E (heavier than most standard acoustic sets). The heavier low E produces more bass volume and sustain; the moderate high E provides the projection he needs for microphone recording without sacrificing playability.
Equipboard documented his string brands: “His three main sets are GHS White Bronze, GHS Boomers Dynamite Alloy (electric), and Martin Retro.” The specific combination of three different string products suggests he uses different sets for different instruments or different musical contexts rather than a single universal choice.
Picks — Filed, Beveled, and Specific:
Like Tony Rice, Blake modifies commercial picks by hand. Acoustic Guitar documented: “For picks he either uses a Fender Extra Heavy tricornered pick (that he files down to round and bevel the edges), or the back edge of a D’Andrea Pro Plec.”
Equipboard provided a direct quote from Blake: “I like a 1.5 mm D’Andrea Pro Plec. And I use Dunlop some. Sometimes I use the teardrop, and sometimes I use the three-cornered ones. For those, I usually round off a corner. I use the rounded edge of a teardrop pick more than I do its point, but you don’t get as much projection on a microphone. I tend to use a sharper pick when playing on microphones than I would use just sitting around.”
The distinction between playing “on microphone” and “just sitting around” is practically significant: microphone recording requires more pick attack to project into the microphone clearly; informal playing requires less. Blake adjusts his pick choice based on the specific context, using the sharper tip on microphone and the rounded edge when not being recorded. The Apollo Picks signature models — picks designed specifically to emulate Blake’s approach to shape and beveling — confirm that his pick modification approach is considered important enough to be commercially reproduced.
The Loose Right-Hand Technique:
Wikipedia documented a specific technical characteristic: “He is known for his loose, right-hand guitar technique, which arose out of his mandolin technique.” The mandolin is played with a looser wrist motion than most flatpick approaches — the pick oscillates more freely from the wrist, less driven by forearm rotation. Blake’s translation of this mandolin-derived looseness to guitar produces a specific picking quality: less rigid, more fluid, with less of the hard-driven attack that characterises the more arm-heavy flatpicking of Watson and Rice.
The result is audible: Blake’s flatpicking sounds relaxed in a way that Watson’s and Rice’s don’t, not because it’s less precise but because the physical approach is genuinely less tense. Acoustic Guitar described the paradox perfectly: “The first time many guitarists hear Norman Blake they think to themselves, ‘I could do that.’ But if they actually sit down to try, they soon discover that what sounds simple is actually devilishly hard.”
Bar fret preference:
Blake prefers the feel of bar frets — the fret style used on pre-war guitars, which are wider and taller than modern frets — over contemporary fretwire. His Martin signature model uses custom tall, wide frets that approximate this feel. Bar frets produce a slightly different feel under the finger: more distinct separation between fret positions, and a different response to bending and vibrato.
Tone note: He uses a sharper pick on microphone and a rounded edge when sitting around. He orders strings individually and mixes gauges by guitar. He files and bevels his picks by hand. He refuses to sign his signature guitar. Every decision, from the smallest pick-shape detail to the largest instrument choice, is directed by the same principle: what serves the music and the sound, not what serves the image or the brand.
Playing Style & Tone Philosophy: Leaving Out the Wrong Things
Norman Blake’s playing philosophy is the most explicitly stated in this entire series, because he has articulated it consistently across fifty years of interviews. The philosophy has not changed. The playing has not changed. The philosophy and the playing are the same thing.
“I’m More Interested in the Music and the Tone Than I Am the Licks”
This statement — from the Fretboard Journal interview — is the complete artistic manifesto. The “licks” are the technical demonstrations, the impressive passages, the things that make other guitarists stop and say “how did he do that?” The music is what the licks are supposed to serve. Blake’s refusal to prioritize the licks over the music produces playing that sounds deceptively simple but is, on examination, extraordinarily difficult — because every note is doing specific work, and no note is doing more than its necessary work.
Jerry Faires, who composed songs that Blake has recorded, articulated this precisely in the Fretboard Journal: “Norman’s drive to simplicity, while never losing sight of the core melodic content of any tune, sets him apart from a world of ‘hot pickers.’ I told him he was a great inspiration to a guy like me, with little natural ability, for that very simplicity, and he said, ‘Well, I try to leave out everything I can while keeping it musical.'”
Leave out everything you can while keeping it musical. That’s the principle. It is, as a principle, much harder to execute than its opposite.
Tone note: “I’d rather give an honest performance than a professional one.” In music, as in most things, honesty and professionalism are usually not in conflict — but when they are, choosing honesty is the harder and rarer choice. Blake has been choosing it for sixty years. The specific character of his playing — the sense that every note is genuinely meant, that nothing is habitual, that the music is happening in real time — is the audible result of that choice.
The 12-Fret Philosophy
Blake’s preference for 12-fret guitars is not merely aesthetic — it’s connected to his broader philosophy of getting the most natural sound from the instrument. He believes the 12th fret join creates a specific acoustic relationship between the neck and the body that enhances the guitar’s resonance. Whether or not this belief is acoustically verifiable (guitar acoustics are complex enough that such claims are hard to definitively prove or disprove), it is the belief of someone who has played more different vintage guitars than most guitarists encounter in a lifetime, and who has developed his preferences through direct listening experience rather than received theory.
The Traditional Repertoire
Blake’s repertoire spans traditional fiddle tunes, old-time country music, Civil War-era songs, train songs, and original compositions in the style of all of the above. Wikipedia described his music as “neo-traditionalist Americana folk and roots music (folk, bluegrass, country, blues), and many of the songs he plays are traditional, but he plays this acoustic type of music with a style, speed, and quality that has evolved and progressed in the modern age.”
The “evolved and progressed” is important: Blake is not a preservationist playing museum pieces. He brings a contemporary player’s technique and sensibility to traditional material, producing recordings that are simultaneously historically rooted and genuinely of the present. His song “Ginseng Sullivan” has become a bluegrass and folk standard — a new song so grounded in the tradition that it sounds like it must have existed for a hundred years.
The O Brother, Where Art Thou? Moment
The O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack (2000) introduced Blake and the broader Americana acoustic tradition to an enormous audience that had not previously encountered it. The soundtrack — produced by T Bone Burnett, featuring Blake alongside Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Ralph Stanley, and others — won the Grammy for Album of the Year. For Norman Blake, who had spent thirty years playing music that the mainstream country and pop industries consistently ignored, this was the specific moment of cultural recognition that the tradition deserved.
The Raising Sand moment (2007) deepened it: an album by Robert Plant — the Led Zeppelin singer — and Alison Krauss, featuring Blake’s acoustic guitar work, won five Grammys. Blake, from his house in the Georgian hinterlands, had been heard by an audience that stretched from Appalachian traditional music enthusiasts to Led Zeppelin fans.
How to Sound Like Norman Blake: The Old-Time Guitar Tone
Blake’s tone is achievable with the right guitar type and a relaxed picking approach. The guitar is less specific than Doc Watson’s or Tony Rice’s — because Blake himself is always searching and never settled. What matters is the category: 12-fret small-body or dreadnought acoustic, vintage or vintage-inspired, with modified beveled picks.
The Guitar
12-fret acoustic guitar: a 00, 000, or 12-fret dreadnought. The 12-fret neck join is the consistent preference. Martin 000-28 Norman Blake Signature for the production replica of his custom design; vintage 12-fret Martins or Gibsons for the authentic approach.
- Martin 000-28 Norman Blake Signature — The production model; unique 12-fret/000 body/24.9″ scale combination; closest production access to his specific requirements
- Martin 000-28 or 00-28 (standard production) — Pre-war or current production; 12-fret versions for authentic Blake character
- Gibson Nick Lucas Special (vintage) — His own choice for the 12-fret smaller-body period
- Any quality 12-fret acoustic — The 12-fret characteristic is more important than the specific brand
The Pick
A beveled-edge pick — either the rounded back edge of a D’Andrea Pro Plec or a Fender Extra Heavy tricornered pick filed and rounded. The beveling and rounding produce the specific releasing quality of his pick attack. Apollo Picks now produces signature models based on his approach.
The Strings
Custom-mixed gauges, lighter on the high strings (.011 high E) and heavier on the low strings (.060 low E). GHS White Bronze or Martin Retro for warm acoustic character. John Pearse (as used by Doc Watson) also works.
No Amplification
Acoustic only. Neumann pencil condensers (or equivalent quality small-diaphragm condensers) for recording. Minimal processing: good preamps, gentle compression if needed, and the natural room sound.
| Element | Specification | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Guitar | 12-fret acoustic; 00 or 000 body; mahogany or rosewood back and sides | Martin 000-28 Blake signature for production; vintage 12-fret models for authentic |
| Strings | Custom mix: .011 high E, .060 low E; GHS White Bronze or Martin Retro | Mix gauges individually to balance each specific guitar |
| Pick | Beveled D’Andrea Pro Plec or filed Fender Extra Heavy tricornered; Apollo signature models | Use rounded back edge for informal playing; sharper tip for microphone projection |
| Right-hand technique | Loose mandolin-derived wrist motion; less arm than Watson | The looseness is the key; if your picking sounds tense, relax the wrist |
| Amplification | None; small-diaphragm condenser microphone to PA or recording interface | X-pattern or ORTF microphone placement on guitar; close-mic vocal separately |
Budget vs Authentic
Budget:
- Guitar: Seagull S6 or Yamaha FG800 (spruce/mahogany acoustic); 12-fret option if available
- Strings: D’Addario light or custom mix from singles
- Pick: D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5mm; file the edges to bevel them slightly
Authentic:
- Guitar: Martin 000-28 Norman Blake Signature or vintage 12-fret Martin 00/000
- Strings: GHS White Bronze custom-mixed gauges
- Pick: Apollo Picks Norman Blake signature or custom-filed D’Andrea/Fender pick
The Essential Technique
The loose wrist. Blake’s mandolin-derived right-hand technique is the single most important departure from the Watson/Rice flatpicking approach. Where Watson uses arm motion and Rice uses precise alternating downstroke emphasis, Blake’s wrist is relaxed to the point that the pick motion seems almost effortless. Practice picking while consciously releasing tension in the wrist — not so much that the pick control is lost, but enough that the pick hand feels fluid rather than mechanical.
Then: leave out notes. Learn a simple fiddle tune — “Whiskey Before Breakfast” or “Ginseng Sullivan” — and play the simplest version you can while keeping it musical. Each time you’re tempted to add a fill, a lick, a run — ask whether it serves the tune or merely serves your impulse to demonstrate something. If it doesn’t serve the tune, leave it out.
“I try to leave out everything I can while keeping it musical.”
That’s the technique.
Influence & Legacy: The Honest Performance
Norman Blake’s influence is the influence of a specific principle as much as a specific technique. Players who study Watson absorb the DUDU alternating motion and the arm-drive. Players who study Rice absorb the jazz harmony and the beveled pick. Players who study Blake absorb the commitment to the music over the licks — a principle that is harder to teach than technique and more important to the music than any specific lick.
The documented musical influence:
- Doc Watson — Peer and collaborator; Watson’s Elementary, Doctor Watson! featured Blake; mutual respect between the two acoustic masters
- Tony Rice — Two collaborative albums; the Rice-Blake pairing is one of the celebrated encounters in acoustic guitar history
- John Hartford — Aereo-Plain (1971); the album that first brought the new acoustic music to wide attention featured Blake prominently
- Contemporary acoustic guitarists broadly — His teaching videos and instructional materials have directly influenced generations of players
- O Brother soundtrack listeners — The album introduced the traditional acoustic tradition to an audience numbering in the millions
Fretboard Journal’s assessment is the most accurate summary: “Mind you, there is nothing unprofessional about Norman Blake. Playing music is the only job he has ever had, and he’s been a secret weapon for legends like Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, John Hartford and Kris Kristofferson. So while Blake is obviously a professional, his true aspiration remains clear: His music is meant to speak to people’s hearts, not to demonstrate his virtuosity.”
He is still searching for the sound. He recently acquired a 1920s fan-braced Martin Ditson. He is still wondering how many were made.
“I don’t like the hunt, but I like finding that sound.”
Tone note: He played on Nashville Skyline, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, O Brother Where Art Thou, and Raising Sand — four of the most historically significant acoustic music recordings of the last fifty years, from four completely different eras. Each time, he played what the music required and no more. Each time, the music was better for his restraint. That’s sixty years of the same choice, made correctly every time.
In Sulphur Springs, Alabama, a boy listened to the Carter Family and the Skillet Lickers on the radio. He picked up a guitar. He left school at sixteen. He played fiddle and dobro in county dance bands. Johnny Cash told him his playing was too good and asked him to play half as much, on single strings. He did.
He played on Nashville Skyline. He played on Will the Circle Be Unbroken. He played on O Brother, Where Art Thou? He played on Raising Sand. He filed his picks by hand. He refused to sign his signature guitar. He avidly buys and sells vintage 12-fret acoustic guitars, never sticking to any particular one for long.
He said: “I’d rather give an honest performance than a professional one.”
He said: “I try to leave out everything I can while keeping it musical.”
He is still searching for the sound. He doesn’t like the hunt but he likes finding it. He is still playing. He is still recording. He will probably never be satisfied.
That’s what honesty looks like when it’s applied to a lifetime of music.
If Norman Blake’s philosophy — leave out everything you can while keeping it musical — has you exploring the traditional Americana acoustic music he inhabits, check out our complete guide to Doc Watson’s guitars and gear — the other master of the flatpicking tradition who played on the same Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album and who approached the guitar with the same commitment to service over display.
And for the guitarist who shared two album covers with Blake, their battered vintage Martins facing the camera with equal dignity, don’t miss our breakdown of Tony Rice’s complete gear guide — whose bullet-holed 1935 D-28 and Blake’s rotating collection of 12-fret gems are two different answers to the same question about what an acoustic guitar should be.
FAQ: Norman Blake Guitars & Gear
- What guitars does Norman Blake play?
- Norman Blake avidly buys and sells vintage guitars, never settling on a single primary instrument, but consistently preferring 12-fret guitars — instruments where the neck joins the body at the 12th fret rather than the contemporary standard of the 14th fret. His documented collection at the time of his Premier Guitar rig rundown included: 1907 Maurer, 1928 Martin 00-45, 1933 Gibson L-Century, 1937 Gibson J-35, 1938 Martin 000-42, 1941 Martin 000-21, and a 1960s Yamaha FG-160. Previously significant instruments include a 1934 Martin D-18H (1980s primary), a 1929 Gibson Nick Lucas Special, and the 1936 D-18 pictured on the Whiskey Before Breakfast album cover.
- What is the Martin 000-28 Norman Blake Signature?
- A unique production guitar released in 2004 that combined specifications that had never existed in a single Martin before: a 14-fret 000 body size with a 12-fret neck join, a short 24.9″ scale length, a smaller 00-sized soundhole, and custom tall wide frets approximating bar frets. Notably, Blake refused to include his signature on the fingerboard — a preference Martin documented as reflecting “his humble nature.” The guitar was designed after Blake commissioned luthier Wayne Henderson to build a custom 000 with 12-fret neck, which then informed the Martin collaboration.
- Why does Norman Blake prefer 12-fret guitars?
- He believes the neck joining at the 12th fret — the octave — creates a specific acoustic resonance advantage. In his words: “I’ve always maintained that the fact that it joins the body at the octave — on the strongest harmonic point there at the 12th fret — has something to do with it.” The 12-fret join also moves the bridge closer to the center of the guitar’s top, which changes the resonance pattern. He transitioned from early-career dreadnoughts to smaller 12-fret instruments in the 1980s and has maintained this preference since, describing 12-fret guitars as having a “bigger tone and more open sound.”
- What picks does Norman Blake use?
- He modifies commercial picks by hand — either a Fender Extra Heavy tricornered pick filed and beveled, or the back edge of a D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5mm. He adjusts his pick use by context: “I tend to use a sharper pick when playing on microphones than I would use just sitting around.” Apollo Picks now produces signature models based on his approach to shape and beveling. He typically uses the rounded back edge of the teardrop pick for informal playing and shifts to a sharper tip for microphone projection in recording or performance contexts.
- What is Norman Blake’s playing philosophy?
- “I’m more interested in the music and the tone than I am the licks. I want the licks to be subtle and say what they’re gonna say. And I want to put in the right things and leave out the wrong things. Just making a lick is not my goal.” He summarises this as “trying to leave out everything I can while keeping it musical,” and his aspiration as: “I’d rather give an honest performance than a professional one.” This philosophy produces playing that sounds deceptively simple but is, on examination, extraordinarily difficult — because every note is doing specific work with nothing extraneous included.
- What is Norman Blake’s connection to Johnny Cash?
- After moving to Nashville, Blake met June Carter, which led to a recording session with Johnny Cash. At that first session, Cash told Blake his dobro playing was too good for one of his records and asked him to “play about half as much and play it on single strings.” Blake adjusted, and the resulting restraint defined both the session and Blake’s professional philosophy. He continued recording and touring with Cash for the next forty years, a relationship built on Cash’s initial instruction to play less.
- How do I get Norman Blake’s guitar tone?
- A 12-fret acoustic guitar — Martin 000-28 Norman Blake Signature for the production option, or a vintage 12-fret Martin 00/000 for authenticity. Custom-mixed string gauges: lighter on high strings (.011 high E) and heavier on low strings (.060 low E). A beveled D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5mm or hand-filed Fender Extra Heavy pick. No amplification — acoustic through condenser microphone to PA or recording interface. The critical technique is a loose, mandolin-derived right-hand wrist (less arm-driven than Watson’s approach) that produces the fluid, relaxed quality of his flatpicking. And the harder instruction: leave out notes. Play the minimum required to keep the music musical. “Just making a lick is not my goal.”
