Thumb that bass, Darling!

certainly a different way to "pluck" a string. Maybe that's how you learn to play in rural NC? maybe it was a volume thing...allowing some kinda palm muting, like when you play with your thumb on BG. And it does kinda look like at some point he's using the thumb and finger at the same time. certainly unique

 

Before I got my amp/speaker set up, I used thumb exclusively to get volume at gigs. Now I can use and do prefer using fingers, but occasionally use thumb with fingers for fast passages across more than one string.

Very cool clip, by the way. Good music in those shows! I see he is plucking towards the low side, whereas when I was using right thumb I would pluck towards the high side to really get some force on the string. I am not sure I could do what I see him doing!

 

Blisters on the 1st and 2nd fingers?

 

Interesting thought. Very soft gut strings by the look of things. There's also something peculiar about the anatomy of his thumb rotation. I think most of us would have to rotate our wrists much more to get the kind of attack angle he's getting.

 

I was also finding his left hand thumb interesting. Sort of a "convenient below the 5th fret" posture that I see with some guitarists.

The right thumb plucking on DB is something I had never seen before in bluegrass (for 50 years) so it may have been something unique to MJ. I know DD's right hand posture on the banjo was pretty unique also, tucking the ring finger under the hand; a number of us 3rd generation banjo players took that on.

The Dillards brought a lot of great things into bluegrass.