Pontotoc County Native Making Mark on Milwaukee Blues Scene
by Brenda OwenDownload original story from the Pontotoc Progress LeeGatesPontotocNews.pdf
From the farms of 1950s Pontotoc County, Mississippi to the Milwaukee blues scene of the 21st Century, Lee Gates has traveled a road that has taken him around the world. Now hailed as one of Milwaukee’s pre-eminent blues musicians, Lee was born December 20, 1937 in Pontotoc. “I grew up in Pontotoc County,” he said recently in a phone interview from his home in Milwaukee. “I lived out between Pontotoc and Ecru.” His parents Brice and Inez Gates were both guitarists, and he remembers learning to “play guitar in Oxford, Mississippi. I used to work down on Brown’s Farm in Oxford with my daddy. I was about nine years old and I knew that’s what I wanted.” His musically gifted parents encouraged his dreams. When he was 14, his mother bought him an electric guitar, no small purchase in those lean days. But he listened and learned. He listened to BB King, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters on the radio and picked up a tip here and there from other blues players, especially his parents, both of whom played blues and country blues
In 1959, the 22-year-old Lee migrated to Milwaukee where he found work performing with the house band at Wilson’s Club at 10th and Center Streets, a gig he held for 15 years while he worked at a steel mill during the day. “Sometimes I use to get home at 5 o’clock in the morning and go to work without any sleep,” Lee recalled. In addition to Milwaukee, he’s played all throughout the United States, from California to Kansas to Alabama, and even in Europe. The decades of struggle finally paid dividends in October 2003 when he recorded his first CD. Tim Duffy, president of Music Makers Relief Foundation in Hillsborough, North Carolina, related the story on the album cover notes: “Lee called me up and announced that he was coming to Hillsborough. I asked him what for and Lee replied, ‘To make a CD.’ I asked Lee if he wouldn’t mind going down to Alabama to record. Two days later, Lee caught a Greyhound to Huntsville, he missed a layover in Nashville and got in early the next morning and went straight to the studio with Ardie Dean. Lee proclaimed the record done in three hours and was soon on a bus heading back home. One must rejoice in the ‘happening’ of this CD, especially the glorious tone of Lee’s guitar. After performing for 52 years I have a feeling that Lee is just beginning his recording career.”
Indeed, following Lee’s first CD, Lee Gates and the Alabama Cotton Kings, his has recorded two other albums with Music Maker, Black Lucy’s Deuce and, most recently, Touring with Lucy, released in September 2009. “Black Lucy — that’s my guitar,” Lee explained. Lee’s family includes a sister still living in Pontotoc, a brother in New Albany and more family in the Milwaukee area including two daughters, a grandchild and his mother, but it is certainly Lucy who has been his most constant companion through the years. The instrument is almost an extension of his own body, giving voice to the music he hears in his mind so he can share it with others.
Music critic Lou Novacheck said of Lee in a recent blog: “Lee Gates has Mississippi Mud running through his veins. He also has blues genes, since he’s a first cousin to Albert Collins (a legendary Texas blues musician). If Lee isn’t a true-blue, Mississippi Delta bluesman, then nobody can carry that moniker. But Lee isn’t just a bluesman. He’s also a Luther Allison-style blues rocker from Pontotoc, Mississippi. Lee hasn’t had any of the breaks that many other less-skilled blues-rockers have had in spite of his blazing guitar work and good writing skills. He’s had several brushes with greatness, coming close to the golden ring, but never quite reaching it. But he’s most certainly not lacking the talent to still reach it. Maybe this time around.”
Whether or not he reaches worldwide fame, Lee said he will play his music and be true to himself and his roots. “I don’t try to play like anyone else, I create my own thing,” Lee said. Pontotoc County native making mark on Milwaukee blues scene Lee Gates traces his roots and his music back to Pontotoc County.
Source: The Pontotoc Progress
