18 Facts About Carl Rutherford

Carl Rutherford was an American Piedmont blues, country blues, and Appalachian music guitarist, singer and songwriter.

Carl Rutherford was born with spina bifida, and his parents did not enter a name on his birth certificate, not expecting him to survive.

Carl Rutherford learned to play the slide guitar from his uncle Will Muncy's tuition.

Muncy owned reissued records of Frank Hutchison and, by 1942, Carl Rutherford had learned to play in open tuning with a closed pocketknife as a slide, imitating Hutchison's technique.

The thumb-and-finger banjo picking of his mother, coupled with his uncle's teaching, left Carl Rutherford picking the guitar with the thumb providing an alternating bass rhythm while the forefinger played the melody.

At the age of 18, Carl Rutherford went to work for the Olga Coal Company in their coal mines, after paying someone, because of his disability, to pass the physical on his behalf.

Carl Rutherford found it hard to return to his duties, but he determined to help his father pay off the cost of purchasing some land.

Once the funds were secured after working another two years at the mine, Carl Rutherford relocated to California.

Deeply moved by the hardship he witnessed underground, Carl Rutherford decided to try to preserve the music and style of playing reminiscent of that heard during the 1920s.

In July 1950, Carl Rutherford found employment in the logging camps around Redding, California.

In 1975, Carl Rutherford moved from California to Warriormine, West Virginia, by then a well-seasoned musician.

Carl Rutherford played at the Vandalia Gathering in Charleston, West Virginia in 1978, both solo and then with Hazel Dickens.

Carl Rutherford had been photographed by Music Maker playing a guitar in his lap in Pinnacle, North Carolina in 1998.

In "Last Handloader", Carl Rutherford noted how machinery was making many miners redundant.

Carl Rutherford was noted in the book Music Makers: Portraits and Songs from the Roots of America.

Carl Rutherford took the opportunity to perform at the Portsmouth Blues Festival in New Hampshire, the National Guitar Festival in North Carolina, and at Ferrum Blues Week in West Virginia.

Carl Rutherford later moved back to California to reside with his daughter.

Carl Rutherford died from emphysema on January 28,2006, at the age of 76.