First artist that got you hooked on acoustic guitar?

[Queequeg]

I've had some kind of guitar since I was about 13 years old. The Beatles were on top then.
And I never really put the guitar away, but I wasn't really serious about it.
By the time I hit middle age I knew all 3 cowboy chords   and I could fake a fingerpicking pattern as long as it repeated throughout from beginning to end.
Truth told, that's about all.

But about that same time it occurred to me that for a fellow my age it was rather unseemly for me to be singing songs about 'Sweet 16' and stuff like that.
I had to be honest with myself, as I knew I wasn't a great singer, and I really hadn't progressed with guitar very much, either. Still, my love of music drove me to continue somehow.
So I quit singing altogether and concentrated on guitar. I put away all the flat picks because I knew I would never be able to play like Tony Rice or Django.

I had been listening to Leo Kottke and John Fahey and Mississippi John Hurt for a long time; many years. I liked that music a lot and soon I discovered a whole world of beautiful fingerstyle guitar music and musicians.
At last I had found my place with the acoustic guitar. And I made so many new friends.

I'm always working on new music now. It's a great brain exercise.
Like so many of you here, I play every day, year 'round, and I can't even imagine what I might be doing without it. (Hopefully not sitting in front of the TV with a 6-pack every night.)

[teh]

My story is similar but I think it was a combination of junior high, high school, college, part time jobs and just being a kid that slowed me down. When I bought my first good guitar in 1977 at 21, I made some progress for a couple of years, but then Marriage, three kids in five years slowed me down again. I got my first Larrivee in 2004.

I got my first guitar, which I still have, when I was 12 and am mostly self taught. After wading through Home on the Range, Oh Susannah, 500 Miles and Red River Valley for a few months, I discovered Gordon Lightfoot in 1970. His songwriting style, lyrics and chord progressions made an impression on me. After 50+ years of playing his music, my son bought me an 8 song GL Tutorial for Christmas from Homespun by the late Pete Huttlinger and I have picked some cool tips already. Along the way, I picked up on Bob Dylan, Jim Croce, James Taylor, John Denver, Bruce Cockburn, Steve Goodman and John Prine and an host of others. When I lived in Philadelphia, I used to go to The Main Point, Tower Theatre and Philadelphia Folk Festival on a regular basis. There I listened to Michael Cooney, Arlo Guthrie, David Bromberg, Jackson Browne as well as a lot of unknowns.

58 years later, I'm often asked if I play the guitar and I usually tell them that most people ask me to stop playing after I start but I still have a lot of fun.