I like that he can accompany himself while singing. That's a little harder than just picking. There were and are so many outstanding 5-string players out there. Some are high-speed technical pickers, while others always seem more musical to me. John Hartford picks musically, so I like his style.
When I was playing, I really focused on the bluegrass standard pieces. The group I was with performed those, wherever we were, so we didn't focus on putting that instrumentation and our voices into other musical styles. We were decent at it, but never at a professional level. Still, we enjoyed playing a lot and did play a lot.
When I was in the USAF, my banjo traveled with me, even to Turkey, where I was stationed for 15 months. There were always people around who could play bluegrass, so we formed groups and entertained ourselves and others. When I arrived in Turkey at Istanbul, I had to go through customs and was asked to open my banjo case. The Turkish customs inspector insisted that I take it out and demonstrate that I could play it and wasn't bringing it into the country to sell. So, I checked the tuning, put on my finger picks and busted out with the Beverly Hillbillies theme. I ended up being stuck in customs for about half an hour, as a small crowd gathered around and insisted that I play just one more tune. I don't think the Turks had seen anyone play a banjo in person before. Fun memory.
Later in my life, when I had to work, I shifted over to playing oboe in a semi-professional wind quintet. That took up all my spare time, so the old Bacon 5-string sat in the closet for years. I finally sold it one year to cover our property taxes during a lean period.
Movin' on. My life has always been one of stages and moving on to other stages. I almost never go back to an earlier thing, though.
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