Silent Strings

Etta Baker

“I was immediately taken by her version of Railroad Bill. [Etta Baker] is the greatest influence on my guitar playing.” - Taj Mahal Etta Baker worked in a textile mill, raised nine children, and didn’t take her music to the stage until she was 60 years old. Fortunately for all…

The Branchettes

The Branchettes of Johnston County, North Carolina (Ethel Eliot and Lena Mae Perry) have been performing hymns and gospel songs together for well over twenty years. Their style and repertory have their roots in the older African-American musical traditions of congregational hymn singing.

Cora Mae Bryant

Cora Mae Bryant was the daughter of Georgia guitar legend Curley Weaver. She remembers, “When the weekend came, Daddy would come and get me. We did not know the difference between night and day.” Curley would perform from one house party to the next often meeting up with his friends…

Willa Mae Buckner

“The Wild Enchantress,” “Princess Ejo,” “The Snake Lady,” and “The World’s Only Black Gypsy.” Born: June 15th, 1922, Augusta, GA Repertoire: Silent Strings, Acoustic Blues Willa Mae Buckner was born on June 15th, 1922 in Augusta, Georgia. In her days as a touring performer, Buckner was known as “The Wild…

James Davis

James Davis (1931-2007) was from Perry, Georgia. Mid-Georgia remains a vast untapped area of undocumented musical traditions. His music stemed from the fife and drum music, which is among the oldest African-American musical traditions. His father played the snare drum and his uncle played the bass drum. They used to…

Ernie K Doe

Ernie-K-Doe had a huge hit with the novelty song “Mother-in-Law” in 1961. He and his wife Antoinette opened their own club in New Orleans in 1994 which was a popular stop for musicians coming through town. Ernie had been through the mill but with help of his wife he regained…

Mr. Frank Edwards

Mr. Frank Edwards, elder statesman of Atlanta’s blues community, died Friday, March 22, 2002 in Greenville, SC. He was 93. Born March 20, 1909, in Washington, GA, Edwards left home at 14 after a disagreement with his father, bound for St. Augustine, Florida. He bought a guitar and began learning…

Cora Fluker

Cora Fluker was born in Livingston, Alabama, around 1920. When Denise and I visited her in 1997 it was a deeply moving experience. She told us of a childhood growing up sharecropping with her family. The conditions were so hard that she tried to run away at the age of…

Preston Fulp

Preston Fulp grew up in Walnut Cove, an area just north of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where his family sharecropped tobacco. Preston took to music at an early age, starting to play the guitar when he was six. By his teens he was proficient on the violin and banjo and was…

Guitar Gabriel

Drink houses in Winston-Salem, North Carolina’s black community, like juke joints in the Mississippi Delta, remain a vigorous setting for the perpetuation of the blues at its most real and rooted level. A refuge for the homeless and the down-and-out, as well as a gathering place for friends and lovers,…

Elder James Goins

Elder James Goins born July 18th, 1921 is Pastor for the Spiritual Holiness Church in Simpson, South Carolina. He and his wife Mother Pauline are a classic example of performing great music at its most basic and powerful best. It just shows you how much that less is more. Their…

Macavine Hayes

Macavine Hayes was born in Tampa, Florida on June 3rd 1943. His family farmed and he was the oldest of 5 sisters and 5 brothers. He remembers, “There was always something to do down on the farm, we listened to the radio and got up on the back porch and…

Big Boy Henry

Although Richard “Big Boy” Henry was an imposing figure at first glance, he was one of the sweetest, most gentle men ever to sing the blues. Born in Beaufort, North Carolina in 1921, he spent much of his life near the coast earning a modest living for himself and his…

David Johnson

David Johnson (1930 - 1997) lived in Elba, Alabama and was a musician and a visionary artist. He was well described by Swedish blues researcher Bengt Olson who wrote,” David lives in a block-house… he’s probably the most amazing man I’ve seen. A technical wizard for sure. He’s got little…

Elder Anderson Johnson

Elder Anderson Johnson spent his career preaching and playing his steel guitar on the streets of America. He made a fine record of “God Don’t Like It” and others back in the 1958 in Miami, Florida, for the Angel, Glory and Deluxe labels. He eventually settled in Newport News, Virginia…

Todd Jones

Mark Austin found this old glass negative at a swap meet one day in Virginia in the 70s. I was stunned by this image when I met Mark at an art show one afternoon. Years later when we ran this photo on the cover of our newsletter I simply titled…

Pernell King

Pernell King from Winston-Salem, North Carolina is a half-brother of Guitar Gabriel. In their youth this pair hoboed the country playing their blues. Pernell spent 27 years in prison. Gabe and I would often visit with him while he was out on work crews. He had a beautiful smooth voice…

Willie King

Willie King lives in Pickens County Alabama, just a few miles from Mississippi, several miles from Aliceville. He envisioned and created a non profit organization called the Rural Members Association to teach the young people their heritage and what he calls survival skills. “We see these kids now, they got…

Lucille Lindsay

I asked Guitar Gabriel one day if he had any brothers or sisters. He mentioned that he had a sister but he had not seen her in eight years. He gave me her married name and I found her, blind from diabetes, in an awful nursing home. When I reunited…

Jack Owens

Jack Owens (1904-1997) was a farmer his entire life in the small town of Bentonia, Mississippi where he ran a juke joint on weekends at his home. David Evans met Jack during one his research trips in the 60s. Since that meeting hundreds of blues fans made the pilgrimage to…

Neal Pattman

Nobody made moonshine, worked a cakewalk, chopped wood or played a harmonica like Neal Pattman (1926-2005). Losing an arm in a wagon wheel at the age of nine didn’t slowed him at all. “66 years ago the Blues knocked on my door and they wouldn’t leave.” His testimony can be…

Eugene Powell

“Play it a Long Time, ‘Cause a Short Willie’s Gonna Make Me Mad” December 23, 1998 should have been the happy occasion of celebrating Eugene Powell’s 90th birthday. Instead it found me with the sad task of writing his obituary. Of all the Mississippi Delta musicians of his generation, Eugene…

Carl Rutherford

It’s a gray world and no yellow line, snow falling harder now. The road to Mayberry twists slick and mean once Winston-Salem recedes in the rear view. There is no Mayberry, of course. It’s really Mount Airy. Mount Pilot, also of Andy Griffith Show fame, is really Pilot Mountain, and…

Cueselle Settle (Mr. Q.)

Mr. Q was born in 1913. He is an old hep-cat whose music just makes you have to smile. A self-taught pianist, he has fashioned his own sound by mixing the piano styles of Art Tatum, Earl Hines and Oscar Peterson interspersed with songs by the Ink Spots. He graduated…

Albert Smith

Albert Smith (born 1912) of Rembert, South Carolina began playing the piano in 1927 when his parents bought him one from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Albert is a lovely, soft-spoken man who at the age of 90 remains a powerful blues shouter and barrel-house pianist. Albert has remained in…

Cootie Stark

A blind street singer, he learned his stuff from Greenville, South Carolina, bluesmen Uncle Chump and Pink Anderson in the 1930’s. At 70 he rediscovered his unplugged genius and has headlined at festivals throughout the U.S. and Europe. His card catalog repertoire runs from soul classics to Piedmont blues songs…

James “Guitar Slim” Stephens

James “Guitar Slim” Stephens was born on March 10, 1915 near Spartanburg, South Carolina. He began to play the pump organ at the age of 5 and two years later he switched to piano. Slim was so small that his feet would not even reach the organ pedals, so he…

Samuel Turner Stevens

Samuel Turner Stevens (1925-1999) was the first musician I met in Asheville, North Carolina in 82. Sam made beautiful fretless banjos, fiddles, guitars, mandolins, wooden mallets, canoe oars, telescopes, windmills, rifles, lamps, sleds, chairs and was an award-winning pool player. When I first met him he had just drawn plans…

Reverend Perry Tillis

Perry Tillis was born on July 29th, 1919 in Elba, Alabama. Swedish blues researcher Bengt Olson met Perry Tillis in 1972 way out in the country outside of the small town of Elba in southeast Alabama. Blind from birth Perry spent his youth learning from older bluesmen and as a…

Othar Turner

Othar Turner was born in 1907 to Hollis and Betty Turner, both sharecroppers, in Jackson County, Mississippi. His father left shortly after his birth, leaving his mother to raise the children. Turner started work at a young age, chopping cotton and plowing fields. He began to play on the tin…

J. W. Warren

J.W. Warren was born on June 22nd, 1921, in Enterprise, AL. At 16 years old he picked up the guitar, and soon after he began performing at local juke joints and barbeques. Warren was a veteran of WWII, he served in the military for fourteen years. In his young days…

Jimmie Lee Williams

Jimmie Lee Williams (1925-1999) lived way out in the country. He had recorded for George Mitchell years ago. Denise and I visited him once and spent a wonderful day together. We kept in close touch and sent him a guitar and he would always send us tapes of new songs…