After college, when I began to seriously collect old LPs, one record I’d always see in the used record bins was Shawn Phillips’ Second Contribution (1971). The intriguing album cover features a long-haired Phillips dressed like a folk sorcerer, in a cape with his back to the camera, playing a 12-string guitar on some stretch of dry, cracked soil. Anyone that could play — not just strum — a 12-string guitar was someone I had to hear. Or did I? ►