Nickel Creek "Nickel Creek" (2000)

Nickel Creek

Distinguished by their youth and eclectic taste, Nickel Creek became a word-of-mouth sensation on the progressive bluegrass scene and soon found their appeal spreading beyond the genre's core audience. Guitarist Sean Watkins, fiddler Sara Watkins (his younger sister), and mandolin/banjo/bouzouki player Chris Thile first started performing together in 1989, when all three were preteens and taking music lessons in their native San Diego. They met while watching the local band Bluegrass Etc., which put on weekly performances in a pizza parlor. A bluegrass promoter liked the idea of such a young band, and thus Nickel Creek was formed, with Thile's father Scott joining them on bass. Nickel Creek were regulars on the festival circuit through most of the '90s, and during that time, Thile recorded two solo albums, 1994's Leading Off... and 1997's Stealing Second. In 1998, with help from Alison Krauss, Nickel Creek landed a record deal with the roots music label Sugar Hill. Krauss produced their self-titled debut album, which was released in 2000; with the kids apparently all right, Scott subsequently retired from the band. Though it was decidedly a bluegrass record, Nickel Creek boasted elements of classical, jazz, and rock & roll both classic and alternative; naturally, the influence of progressive bluegrass figures like Krauss, Edgar Meyer, and Béla Fleck was also apparent. Perhaps aided by the success of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which brought traditional roots music to a whole new collegiate audience, Nickel Creek became a slow-building hit; by early 2002, it had gone gold, climbed into the country Top 20, and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album. Meanwhile, Sean released his solo debut, Let It Fall, in 2001, and Thile followed suit with Not All Who Wander Are Lost. Nickel Creek released their sophomore set, This Side, in 2002; it debuted in the Top 20 of the pop charts and went all the way to number two on the country listings. Even more eclectic than its predecessor, the Krauss-produced album turned indie rock fans' heads with a cover of Pavement's "Spit on a Stranger." This Side won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in early 2003, after which Sean issued his second solo album, 26 Miles. In 2005, the group worked with producers Tony Berg and Eric Valentine (the latter had worked with Smash Mouth and Queens of the Stone Age) to produce Why Should the Fire Die?, a dark and introspective collection of new material that found the trio steering even further away from their bluegrass beginnings. In mid-2006, Nickel Creek announced it would be taking an indefinite hiatus following a scheduled tour the next year, so its members could concentrate on solo work. Thile eventually formed Punch Brothers, releasing a debut album, Punch, on Nonesuch in 2009. Sara Watkins also released an album on Nonesuch in 2009, the self-titled Sara Watkins, which was produced by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame. Sean Watkins, who had formed Fiction Family with Jon Foreman (of Switchfoot), also released an album in 2009, the duo's self-titled Fiction Family from ATO Records. Meanwhile, siblings Sara and Sean continued to host a monthly revue called the Watkins Family Hour at Hollywood's Largo club, playing free form and impromptu sets with the wide array of musicians who might be in town for the evening, including at different times Gabe Witcher, Benmont Tench, Greg Leisz, Jon Brion, Michael Witcher, Jackson Browne, Glen Phillips, Mark O'Connor, Ethan Johns, Matt Chamberlain, Tim O'Brien, and Tom Brosseau, among others.

Source: All Music.com.

Joshua Bell & Edgar Meyer, with Sam Bush and Mike Marshall "Short trip home" (1999)

Joshua Bell

JOSHUA BELL has enchanted audiences worldwide with his breathtaking virtuosity and tone of rare beauty. His restless curiosity and multifaceted musical interests have taken him in exciting new directions which have earned him the rare title of “classical music superstar.” Often referred to as the poet of the violin, Bell is the recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize and is the newly named Music Director of The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Bell first came to national attention at the age of 14 in a highly acclaimed orchestral debut with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra. His Carnegie Hall debut and a recording contract further confirmed his presence in the music world. Today he is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestra leader and composer who performs his own cadenzas to several of the major concerto repertoire. “Bell, Gramophone stated simply, is dazzling.”
Bell’s 2011 festival appearances include Ravinia, Tanglewood, Verbier and Mostly Mozart. He will perform with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Montreal, Dallas, Colorado, Atlanta, and National Symphony orchestras, in San Francisco, as part of the Symphony’s 100th anniversary celebration in recital, with the orchestra, and as leader and soloist with The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Fall highlights include a recital at Carnegie Hall, appearances with the New York Philharmonic and extensive tours through Europe including cities such as Munich, Berlin, Vienna and Paris.
2012 highlights include a 15-city US tour with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and a North American recital tour with pianist Sam Haywood. In Europe, Bell will tour with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski and in recital with Jeremy Denk in cities to include London, Paris and Berlin.
Bell records exclusively for Sony Classical, a MASTERWORKS label. French Impressions, his new album with Jeremy Denk will be released in January 2012 and is Bell’s first sonata recording for Sony Classical. The disc will include repertoire by Ravel, Saint Saëns and Franck.
Since his first LP recording at age 18, Bell has recorded more than 36 CDs. Recent releases include the soundtrack to For Colored Girls, At Home With Friends, featuring Chris Botti, Sting, Josh Groban, Regina Spektor, Tiempo Libre and others, the Defiance soundtrack, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, The Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, The Red Violin Concerto, The Essential Joshua Bell, Voice of the Violin and Romance of the Violin which Billboard named the 2004 Classical CD of the Year, and Bell the Classical Artist of the Year. He has also recorded critically acclaimed recordings of Sibelius and Goldmark as well as Beethoven and Mendelssohn concertos both featuring his own cadenzas, and the Grammy Award winning Nicholas Maw concerto. His Grammy-nominated recording Gershwin Fantasy premiered a new work for violin and orchestra based on themes from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Its success led to a Grammy-nominated all-Bernstein recording that included the premiere of the West Side Story Suite as well as a new recording of the composer’s Serenade. With the composer and double bass virtuoso Edgar Meyer, Bell appeared on the Grammy-nominated crossover recording Short Trip Home and a disc of concert works by Meyer and the 19th-century composer Giovanni Bottesini. Bell also collaborated with Wynton Marsalis on the Grammy-winning spoken word children’s album, Listen to the Storyteller and Bela Fleck’s Grammy Award winning Perpetual Motion. Sony Classical film soundtracks on which Bell has performed also include The Red Violin, which won the Oscar for Best Original Score, the Classical Brit-nominated Ladies in Lavender and Academy Award-winning film Iris.
Bell has premiered new works by composers Nicholas Maw, John Corigliano, Aaron Jay Kernis, Edgar Meyer, Behzad Ranjbaran and Jay Greenberg.
Bell and his two sisters grew up on a farm in Bloomington, Indiana. As a child, he indulged in many passions outside of music, becoming an avid computer game player and a competitive athlete. He placed fourth in a national tennis tournament at age 10 without having taken a single lesson, and still keeps his racquet close by. Bell received his first violin at age four after his parents, both mental health professionals, noticed him plucking tunes with rubber bands he had stretched around the handles of his dresser drawers. By 12 he was serious about the instrument, thanks in large part to the inspiration of renowned violinist and pedagogue Josef Gingold, who had become his beloved teacher and mentor.
Millions of people are just as likely to have seen Bell on The Tonight Show as Tavis Smiley, Charlie Rose, or CBS Sunday Morning. In 2010 Bell starred in his fifth Live From Lincoln Center Presents broadcast titled: Joshua Bell with Friends@ The Penthouse. Other PBS shows include Great Performances – Joshua Bell: West Side Story Suite from Central Park, Memorial Day Concert performed on the lawn of the United States Capitol, Sesame Street and A&E’s Biography. He has twice performed on the Grammy Awards telecast, performing music from Short Trip Home and West Side Story Suite. He was one of the first classical artists to have a music video air on VH1, he has been the subject of a BBC Omnibus documentary and he appeared as himself in the film Music of the Heart starring Meryl Streep. Bell has been profiled in publications ranging from The New York Times and Newsweek to People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People issue, Gramophone and USA Today.
Stated Strad: “Joshua Bell will be the one remembered in 50 years time.”
In 1989, Bell received an Artist Diploma in Violin Performance from Indiana University. His alma mater honored him with a Distinguished Alumni Service Award only two years after his graduation. He has been named an “Indiana Living Legend” and has received the Indiana Governor’s Arts Award.
Bell was named 2010 Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America Bell, he is an inductee of the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame, recognized as a young global leader by the World Economic Forum, serves on the artist committee of the Kennedy Center Honors and is on the Board of Directors of the NewYork Philharmonic. He is the recipient of the Humanitarian Award from Seton Hall University; was honored by Education Through Music for his dedication to sharing his love of classical music with disadvantaged youth and received the Academy of Achievement Award for exceptional accomplishment in the arts.
In 2009 he performed at Ford’s Theatre before President Obama which was followed by an invitation from the President and Mrs. Obama to perform at the White House.
Bell performs on the 1713 Gibson ex Huberman Stradivarius violin and uses a late18th century French bow by Francois Tourte.

Source: Joshua Bell.com.

Jerry Douglas, Russ Barenberg & Edgar Meyer "Skip, hop and wobble" (1993)

Russ Barenberg & Edgar Meyer

Russ Barenberg (acoustic guitar) & Edgar Meyer (double bass)

RUSS BARENBERG

Acoustic guitarist Russ Barenberg is known as one of the most melodic instrumentalists in contemporary acoustic music, and his compositions are among the finest the genre has to offer. He got his start in 1970 with the groundbreaking bluegrass band Country Cooking and since then has been a member of a variety of highly influential groups, most notably his collaboration from 1989 to 2001 in a trio with dobro master Jerry Douglas and bassist Edgar Meyer. Barenberg’s 1979 debut solo album Cowboy Calypso showcased his sophisticated playing and immediately established him as one of the premier composers and arrangers in the emerging new acoustic scene. His work since then, including his most recent collection, When at Last (2007), reflects an ever-deepening musicality with continuing dedication to vibrant, roots-based melodies and ensemble interplay. “Little Monk,” the opening track from When at Last, was nominated for the 2008 GRAMMY for Best Country Instrumental Performance.

Barenberg began playing guitar at the age of 13 in Chester County, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia. He took lessons from Alan Miller, the older brother of future band mate, guitarist John Miller, and was inspired early on by guitarists Doc Watson, Mississippi John Hurt, and Clarence White along with a wide range of old-time, bluegrass and contemporary folk and blues artists.
While attending Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, in 1970, Barenberg joined with Peter Wernick, Tony Trischka, Kenny Kosek and John Miller to form Country Cooking. During the four years that Country Cooking was together, the group recorded two influential albums, Country Cooking: 14 Bluegrass Instrumentals and Barrel of Fun and accompanied mandolinist Frank Wakefield on a third album. Barenberg also played on a number of Trischka’s solo albums throughout the 1970’s.
After Country Cooking disbanded in 1975, Barenberg temporarily switched to electric guitar and performed with a jazz-rock band, Carried Away. In 1977 he moved to New York and, together with Trischka, Miller, and fiddler Matt Glaser, formed the eclectic string band, Heartlands. Heartlands backed Barenberg on many of the cuts on Cowboy Calypso.
Moving to Boston in 1979, he joined Glaser and fiddler/mandolinist Jay Ungar in the triple-fiddle band Fiddle Fever, recording two albums with the group. Fiddle Fever’s recording of “Ashokan Farewell” was later used as the centerpiece for the soundtrack to Ken Burns’ celebrated documentary, The Civil War. Barenberg played on the soundtracks for several other Burns’ films as well, including The Brooklyn Bridge, The Shakers and Huey Long. During this time, he also worked with Glaser and mandolinist Andy Statman in the experimental bluegrass-jazz band Laughing Hands. Barenberg recorded his second solo album, Behind the Melodies, in 1983. That album, along with his appearance on Jerry Douglas’s 1982 release, Fluxedo, marked the beginnings of an ongoing series of collaborations between the two musicians. While in Boston, Barenberg was also active in the vibrant contradance scene, playing frequently for dances. He played on fiddler Rodney Miller’s recording, Airplang, which was seminal to the development of contradance music in the late 80’s and 90’s. A number of Barenberg’s own tunes have since become popular standards in the contradance repertoire.
Barenberg moved to Nashville in 1986 and has lived there since. Along with Douglas, he worked for several years accompanying Irish singer, Maura O’Connell, and in 1988 recorded his third solo album, Moving Pictures, another beautiful collection of original instrumentals featuring Douglas, Meyer, banjoist Bela Fleck, and fiddlers Mark O’Connor and Stuart Duncan, among others. The previously mentioned trio with Douglas and Meyer, active throughout the 1990’s, was a highly original ensemble that further reshaped the direction of acoustic music. Their popular 1993 recording, Skip, Hop & Wobble, has been extremely influential with the a new generation of acoustic instrumentalists. In 1996 Barenberg worked with Douglas, fiddler Darol Anger and Los Angeles-based music producer Snuffy Walden to create the soundtrack for Homecoming, a film starring Anne Bancroft.
Barenberg has performed and recorded with many other top acoustic and country music artists including Randy Travis, Emmy Lou Harris, Ricky Skaggs, Tim O’Brien, Sam Bush, Paul Brady, Darryl Scott, Joan Osborne, Bryan Sutton, Aly Bain, Phil Cunningham, Eddi Reader, Natalie McMaster and Sharon Shannon. Many of these musical associations came about through his ongoing work on The Transatlantic Sessions, a series of television shows produced in Scotland beginning in 1994 that bring together top acoustic musicians from the British Isles and the United States for collaborative performances. The fourth and most recent group of Transatlantic Sessions was filmed in March 2009.

Known widely as an exceptional teacher and author of instructional materials, Barenberg is regularly in demand at workshops and music camps throughout the country. He has been on staff at the Telluride and Rocky Grass Academies in Colorado, Steve Kaufman's camp in Tennessee, The Puget Sound Guitar Workshop in Washington, Augusta Heritage in West Virginia, Pinewoods in Massachusetts, and Fiddle and Dance at Ashokan in New York state.
Barenberg currently freelances in Nashville and performs with his own group--The Russ Barenberg Quartet. His 2007 release on Compass Records is described well by music writer Jon Weisberger:  “…while ensemble interplay is the foundation of When at Last, its heart and soul ultimately is to be found in Barenberg’s tunes—some dating back to the early 90s, others composed shortly before recording began—and in his glistening playing. Few guitarists so perfectly blend a mastery of roots music traditions with melodic originality, or so finely balance muscularity with delicacy, and each moment of the album is shaped by these artistic dualities…”

EDGAR MEYER

Edgar Meyer (born November 24, 1960) is a prominent contemporary bassist and composer. His styles include classical, bluegrass, newgrass, and jazz. Meyer has worked as a session musician in Nashville, part of various chamber groups, a composer, and an arranger. His collaborators have spanned a wide range of musical styles and talents; among them are Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain, Sam Bush, James Taylor, Chris Thile, Mike Marshall, Mark O'Connor, Alison Krauss, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and the trio Nickel Creek.

Meyer grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He learned to play the double bass from his father, the late Edgar Meyer, Sr., who directed the string orchestra program for the local public school system. Meyer later went on to Indiana University to study with Stuart Sankey.
Meyer is noted for achieving virtuosity on an instrument of unusual technical difficulty. Following in the footsteps of other bass players like Gary Karr and Mark Bernat before him, he has tried a hand at performing music originally composed for other instruments, such as Bach's unaccompanied cello suites.
Meyer has also composed a number of works, including two double bass concertos, a string quintet, a double concerto for bass and cello, and a violin concerto in 1999 composed specifically for Hilary Hahn.
In 2000, he won the Avery Fisher Prize, given once every few years to classical instrumentalists for outstanding achievement. In 2002, he was named a MacArthur Fellow. Meyer's collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma and Mark O'Connor on the widely acclaimed Sony Classical disc Appalachia Waltz reached the top of the United States pop charts for 16 weeks when it was released. Meyer collaborated again with Yo-Yo Ma and Mark O'Connor on Appalachian Journey, that earned a Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album.
On Meyer's self-titled 2006 Sony Classical release, he performs accompanied only by himself on a wide variety of instruments besides his usual piano and double bass, including guitar, banjo, viola da gamba, mandolin and dobro.
Meyer is Adjunct Associate Professor of Double Bass at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music, as well as at the Curtis Institute.

Sources: Russ Barenberg.com and Wikipedia.

Jerry Douglas "The best kept secret" (2005)

Jerry Douglas "Lookout for hope" (2002)

Jerry Douglas "Restless on the farm" (1998)

Jerry Douglas "Under the wire" (1986)

Jerry Douglas

A man walks into a diner. He looks familiar with the place but still a little lonely and detached. He sits down and orders, and as he waits he becomes aware of the voices of the other customers. He listens to those voices, and his expression changes from detachment to attentiveness. The meanings of the words he overhears dwindle away, and the man begins to discern in them instead nonverbal tones and patterns. Phrasing, counterpoint, arpeggios, voices as “instruments” with distinctive qualities. Finally, for the man who is sitting there alone, the diner’s babble is transformed into a kind of music. He smiles.
    The man is actor Colm Feore, portraying the great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, in one of the short films from the movie “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould.” This quirky, montage-like Canadian work, made in 1993, was not a huge commercial success, but it did win some prestigious awards and has a cult following to this day. It was based, at least numerically, on Bach’s marvelous piano composition “The Goldberg Variations”—of which there are—uh, thirty-two.
   Jerry Douglas is doing some deep-breathing exercises prior to his appearance. That rhythmic clapping from the balcony doesn’t help. If you think this preamble is pretentious, it might be good to remember that “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould” was parodied as “Twenty Two Short Films About Springfield” by “The Simpsons.”
    The diner scene from this movie shows a great musician allowing himself—almost willing himself—to hear spoken language a) pre-verbally, as if he were a baby and didn’t know what words mean, even what they are, and b) hearing it as if it were simply notes—notes in which, taken together, because he is in fact a brilliant artist, he discovers a sort of spontaneous, improvised musical composition. He responds to what he hears in a very primal, almost infantile way and then with his adult genius imposes order and feeling upon it.
    Jerry Douglas is now checking to make sure that his shirt is not tucked in. He’ll be here any second. Please quit the stomping. 
    This movie’s  “Concerto for Ten or Fifteen Unrelated Diner Voices and Clinking Silverware,” as one might think of it, conveys not only child-like auditory experience and the creative mind at work but also humor and authority--and an example of a huge talent for drawing inspiration from many different sources and synthesizing them. That’s JD’s cue, and here he is at last. You may applaud. 
    Jerry Douglas, who stands center stage before you now in the form of this new, masterful, and wide-ranging album, started his professional career when he was sixteen, the son of a steelworker, living in Warren, Ohio, and playing his instrument of choice, the Dobro, in bars. He has--like Glenn Gould as portrayed in the Concerto Diner--absorbed the sights and sounds around him and transmuted them into his own unique art by developing an eclectic style of playing and composing for the Dobro and other subspecies of resonator and slide guitars. His most clearly audible source is bluegrass—the genre in which he started and over which, if you ask me, he now presides. He has also conscripted and deployed: jazz, with its imperative to improvise; the raw emotion and twang of country music; the plaintive ragas of Indian sitars; Native American modal melodies; the sonata-allegro structures of classical music; Hawaiian music, with its sunny harmonies and marine swells; the note-packed virtuosities of Celtic tunes; woebegone New Orleans funeral marches; Dixieland's brassiness; gospel; and the blues. In a word or three, just about everything. You will also find folded into Douglas's music a great many other ingredients, among them rain, children's games, rivers, and a large amount of weeping—to say nothing of hogs, the war in Iraq, locomotives, confetti, bourbon, machine guns, and the entire cosmos.
    For all this variegation of influences and interests, two constants pervade Douglas's performances and compositions, and they are, as he has said in a recent conversation, “in some tension.” These creatively conflicting constants underlie all of the arts; one is discipline and the other is playfulness. “I always try to stay loose when I perform and when I record,” he says, “but I always worry that if I get too far away from the main idea, the whole thing will fall apart.” He wants his audience to embrace this paradox as well. “I want the music I play to be challenging, but I don't want it to sound that way.” We start “messing around” randomly when we're young children, and in many ways to grow up is to become more orderly, but in the course of that process we often tend to lose the delight of messing around. Successful art—and, in particular, music of any real texture—picks up what's lying around, musically and otherwise, and creates designs from it (again like Glenn Gould in the Lyric Café) and then leads us back through and by means of formal design to a kind of exalted play, in which order is at once questioned and maintained. It's no accident that the same simple verb applies to musical instruments and to games.
    You can think of Jerry Douglas's artistic development, from his earliest, pure-bluegrass days to this newest CD as a continuing maturation—an ever-increasing instrumental mastery, a broadening of scope, a wider range of emotion, an expanding openness and generosity. He just keeps growing up. The origins of the pieces on “Glide” show all these qualities. In his own composition “Sway,” for example, you can hear the bereft sound of a Bourbon Street funeral procession interrupted by an upbeat Dixieland interlude—as those marches often are. “I wanted the slow section to sound as if it was about to fall apart,” he says with a laugh—“to be on the edge of breaking down. Katrina is in there somewhere. Then the faster section is defiant and joyful.” Douglas wrote “Trouble On Alum”—a Scottish-sounding jig bookended by a more serene melody, to illustrate the river painting of William Matthews, the American artist of nature and the West. (Alum is the name of a creek in West Virginia.) When asked about the whirlwind-fast, downward-spiraling Dobro licks in the up-tempo part, Douglas says, laughing again, “They're like signatures. They're like signing my name with some flourishes.”
    The laughter interspersing these quotes is perhaps more nearly the point of citing them than the quotes themselves. For Douglas has great fun with his music. He says, “I enjoy what I'm doing so much that after performing I sometimes say to myself, 'I'm getting paid for that?'” His laughter and pleasure recall the smile on the face of Glenn Gould in that diner, and the people who join in this fun with Douglas are similarly playful and accomplished—Douglas's talented band and guests like his friend Edgar Meyer, the great bass player; Sam Bush, mandolinista supreme; Travis Tritt, the rough-and-tumble, truck-driver-voiced country singer with a surprisingly pretty falsetto; banjo pioneer/giant Earl Scruggs, about whom, simply, the more said the better; and Rodney Crowell, one of our best singer/songwriters. The whole recording at first seems like a cross between a jam session and something stricter—a recital. But if you consider the sense of play and the musical authority that, with a tributary of social consciousness, run beneath the songs here like powerful underground watercourses, you'll understand that it's not only wonderfully complex but also clearly of a piece.
Oh yes—and not only global but also profoundly American.

Source: Jerry Douglas.com.

J. D. Crowe & The New South "Live in Japan" (1982)

J. D. Crowe & The New South "My home ain't in the hall of fame" (1978)

J. D. Crowe & The New South

Banjoist J.D. Crowe was one of the most influential progressive bluegrass musicians of the '70s. Initially influenced by Earl Scruggs, as well as rock & roll and the blues, Crowe worked his way through several bands during the '60s, developing a distinctive instrumental style that melded country, bluegrass, rock, and blues. Crowe didn't receive national exposure until the early '70s when he formed the New South, but after the release of the band's eponymous debut in 1972 he became a fixture on the bluegrass scene for the next 20 years.
Born and raised in Lexington, KY, Crowe picked up the banjo when he was 13 years old, inspired by one of Flatt & Scruggs' performances on the Kentucky Barn Dance. After that show, he regularly attended the duo's performances, sitting down in the front row to study Scruggs' revolutionary picking. Soon, Crowe was playing with various groups in Kentucky, including an outfit that also featured Curley Parker and Pee Wee Lambert. The young banjo player frequently played on local radio stations, and that is where he got his first major break in 1956. Jimmy Martin was driving through Lexington when he heard Crowe on the radio station, and was so impressed with what he heard that he drove to the station and asked him to join his band, the Sunny Mountain Boys. Crowe immediately accepted and began touring with Martin. While he was in the Sunny Mountain Boys, Crowe didn't stick to a strict bluegrass set list -- he often added rock & roll songs to his repertoire.
After spending six years with Martin, Crowe left the Sunny Mountain Boys in 1962 to pursue a solo career. For a while, he played Lexington bars and hotels, developing a new, progressive direction for bluegrass which incorporated stronger elements of folk, blues, and rock. In the mid-'60s, he formed the Kentucky Mountain Boys with Red Allen and Doyle Lawson; they released their first album, Bluegrass Holiday, in 1968 on Lemco Records. The Kentucky Mountain Boys had a varied repertoire, but played solely acoustic instruments. Two other records followed -- Ramblin' Boy and The Model Church -- before the group broke up in the early '70s.
Following the disbandment of the Kentucky Mountain Boys, Crowe formed the New South, which was the most revolutionary bluegrass outfit of its time. Originally, the band consisted of guitarist Tony Rice, mandolinist Ricky Skaggs, dobroist Jerry Douglas, and fiddler/bassist Bobby Sloan, and they played a wildly eclectic brand of bluegrass on electric instruments. When they released their debut, J.D. Crowe & the New South in 1975 on Rounder Records, it caused an instant sensation -- it marked a genuine turning point in the sound of the genre. All of the musicians in the original lineup of the New South were acclaimed and would later go on to popular solo careers -- in fact, most of them had left within a few years of the debut. By the end of the decade, the band featured guitarist/vocalist Keith Whitley, mandolinist Jimmy Gaudreau, fiddler Bobby Slone, and bassist Steve Bryant.
During the '80s, the New South featured an ever-revolving lineup, as former members came back for guest appearances and Crowe discovered fresh, developing talents -- the group became known as a source for new musicians who would later go on to individual success. In 1980, Crowe formed the Bluegrass Album Band with Tony Rice, Bobby Hicks, Doyle Lawson, and Todd Phillips. The Bluegrass Album Band toured and recorded sporadically throughout the course of the decade, always to great critical and popular acclaim. J.D. Crowe continued with the New South until 1988, when he decided to retire from the road. Following his decision, he appeared at special, one-shot concerts -- including a tour with Tony Rice -- but concentrated on studio work, particularly producing records for developing bands.
Retirement from the road proved somewhat of an selective decision for Crowe, however, and he continued to head the New South's ever-varying linups, both live and in the studio. Flashback appeared in 1994 from Rounder Records, followed by Come on Down to My World in 1999 and Lefty's Old Guitar in 2006, both also on Rounder.

Source: All Music.

Hindugrass (1998)

Hindugrass

The sound of Hindugrass is a fresh new voice for Indian fusion, a surprising and engaging festival for the ears in an age where everything has “already been done.” Alternately haunting and soaring sarod melodies intermingle with the sweet twang and bite of instruments from the Smoky Mountains and a driving bed of percussion instruments from around the world, all delivered with delightful virtuosity. Hindugrass was founded in Los Angeles in 1998 by John Heitzenrater and friends as an acoustic vehicle to explore the commonalities between the classical and folk music of Northern India and the folk and bluegrass styles of Appalachia. Mr. Heitzenrater’s mastery of the sarod and intricate compositions are the core thread of this exciting collective of diverse and talented musicians.

John Heitzenrater is a multi-instrumentalist, whose performance career spans more than two decades and multiple genres. The instrument on which he is featured in Hindugrass is sarod, but he has also appeared performing and in recordings on tabla, bassoon, guitars, bass, ghatam, keyboards, and voice. On sarod, Mr. Heitzenrater is a product of the celebrated Maihar-Allaudin Gharana, which traces its lineage to Mian Tansen, court musician of Akbar the Great and the principle progenitor of modern Hindustani classical music. He studied sarod with Pandit Rajeev Taranath, distinguished disciple of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan and one of the world's leading exponents of the sarod. He studied tabla with Lucknow Gharana Maestro Swapan Chaudhuri. He is also versed in the folk music traditions of Macedonia and Bulgaria, in Western classical music, and in various American popular traditions including rock, folk, jazz, and bluegrass. In his diverse performance career, he has shared the stage with an array of talented musicians from around the globe. He performed at the Dalai Lama's World Festival of Sacred Music with master South Indian drummer Poovalur Srinivasan, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles with chitravina virtuoso N. Ravikiran and master drummers Glen Velez and John Bergamo, and he accompanied tabla master Pandit Anindo Chatterjee on harmonium. Mr. Heitzenrater earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in Composition and Performance (on sarod, guitar, and bassoon) and his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Multi-Focus Guitar performance from California Institute of the Arts. In addition to his performance career, John recently finished scoring the short film “A Soaring Life” by Lucas Ridley and the feature film “20 Years After,” the latter with Chris Johnson.

Chris Johnson is a multi-talented musician/ audio engineer/ sound designer/ composer and producer with over 15 years experience covering a diverse range of projects from live performances and workshops to studio recordings. As a multi-instrumentalist, Chris has spent the last 10 years expanding his knowledge and performance skills on instruments from around the globe. Included among these are many percussion instruments from India such as dholak, kanjira, moorsing, and pakawaj with an in-depth study of the Delhi and Lucknow style of tabla in the tradition of Taranath Rao and Swapan Chaudhuri. Chris has also been a maker and teacher of the Australian aboriginal instrument, the didgeridoo, for 13 years and has performed with many different artists in both live and studio situations. Recent projects include regularly performing tabla alongside distinguished  North Indian classical musicians such as Pandit Debi Prasad Chatterjee (sitar), John Heitzenrater (sarod), Viswas Chitnis (sitar), and Jay Manley (Saraswati guitar). Chris performed with and designed soundscapes for the Paperhand Puppet Intervention band in the "I Am Insect" and "Hungry Ghost" productions in 2008. Chris also co-produced the score for the independent feature film "20 Years After" with composer John Heitzenrater.

Jay Manley is a guitarist, producer, composer, and music instructor in Chapel Hill, NC.  Manley received his first guitar at eighteen months old and has devoted his life to the instrument. Classical, Hindustani, rock, blues, country, and jazz all live happily side by side and emerge in his playing style.  Manley was an A.J. Fletcher Scholar and received a B.A. in music from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He studied classical guitar under Robert Nathanson, jazz with Frank Bongiorno, and composition with Dr. Steven Errante.  For three years, Jay studied the Hindustani or North Indian classical musical tradition under vocalist Madhu Mita Sen Saha.  This has led to tremendous musical involvement in the Indian community of Raleigh, Apex, and Morrisville, NC. He is often spotted accompanying Bengali groups and performing Hindustani influenced music on a custom built 21-string “Saraswati” guitar.  He is currently studying with sarodist John Heitzenrater of the Maihar Gharana.

Branavan Ganesan is a tabla player and percussionist from the Chapel Hill area.  He started his percussion studies on the mridangam, in the South Indian (Carnatic) tradition.  He switched to tabla in his teens, first studying with tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain and then Pandit Anindo Chatterjee.  Branavan is also a standing member of the acoustic group Jaffna, based in Philadelphia.  He plays percussion instruments from many traditions, primarily Hindustani classical, flamenco, and Middle Eastern music. 

Source: Reverbnation.

Blue note plays The Beatles (2004)

Stanley Turrentine

Lee Morgan

Buddy Rich

Tony Williams

Dianne Reeves

Cassandra Wilson

Stanley Jordan

Blindside Blues Band "Smokehouse sessions" (2009)

Blindside Blues Band

At the ripe old age of 17 Mike Onesko left his native Fairview Park Ohio for the greener pastures of San Francisco with just $60 and his guitar he hitchhiked his way across country till he arrived in S.F. Upon arrival he formed a power trio called Sundog and started exploring his musical journey playing long jams and heavy sabbath type riffs. Next was Steelwind a five piece outfit with keyboards, That featured John Warmouth on drums and Walker Kaeck(I Think I,m in Love) o vocals. They Headlined at Kezar Stadium just three years after Led Zeppelin played there! The Kwik and Three Man Army were next and they opened for many acts such as Robin Trower, Montrose, Nazareth, Great White, Mitch Ryder, Clarence Clemons, Mike was discovered in the clubs of Marin County California by Shrapnel records President Mike Varney! They formed the Blindside Blues Band with Scott Johnson on guitar,and Jeff Martin on drums and Gregg Chaisson on bass guitar. They put out three records with this lineup.Although Gregg played on the records he never did any live shows with the band! That duty was filled admirably by Kier Staeheli. The last Shrapnel lineup for the Blindside Blues Band was Mike Onesko, Mike Varney, Aysnley Dunbar, James Lomenzo.Mike produced  and played on Cream of The Crop a
tribute to Cream where he produced and performed with Pat Travers, Leslie West Tim Bogert, Rick Derrigner, Glenn Hughes, Neal Schon, and many more! Mike went on to Comet Records in Italy to record many great records such as Mike Onesko's Guitar Army,Smokehouse Sessions, Live At The Torrita Blues Festival, Italy, and Voodoo Crossing and Gypsy Blood both hendrix tributes.Recently, Mike and The Blindside Blues Band just completed their new release with the help of many friends! Davey Pattison, Mike Varney, Derek Reeve, Barry Prior, Jeff Martin is back in the fold!

Source: Mike Onesko Band.com

Blind Boy Fuller "Remastered 1935-38" (2004)

Blind Boy Fuller

Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen) (July 10, 1907 – February 13, 1941) was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.
LIFE AND CAREER

Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina, United States, to Calvin Allen and Mary Jane Walker. He was one of a family of 10 children, but after his mother's death he moved with his father to Rockingham. As a boy he learned to play the guitar and also learned from older singers the field hollers, country rags, and traditional songs and blues popular in poor, rural areas.
He married Cora Allen young and worked as a labourer, but began to lose his eyesight in his mid-teens. According to researcher Bruce Bastin, "While he was living in Rockingham he began to have trouble with his eyes. He went to see a doctor in Charlotte who allegedly told him that he had ulcers behind his eyes, the original damage having been caused by some form of snow-blindness." However, there is an alternative story that he was blinded by an ex-girlfriend who threw chemicals in his face.
By 1928 he was completely blind, and turned to whatever employment he could find as a singer and entertainer, often playing in the streets. By studying the records of country blues players like Blind Blake and the "live" playing of Gary Davis, Allen became a formidable guitarist, and played on street corners and at house parties in Winston-Salem, NC, Danville, VA, and then Durham, North Carolina. In Durham, playing around the tobacco warehouses, he developed a local following which included guitarists Floyd Council and Richard Trice, as well as harmonica player Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry, and washboard player/guitarist George Washington.
In 1935, Burlington record store manager and talent scout James Baxter Long secured him a recording session with the American Recording Company (ARC). Allen, Davis and Washington recorded several tracks in New York City, including the traditional "Rag, Mama, Rag". To promote the material, Long decided to rename Allen as "Blind Boy Fuller", and also named Washington Bull City Red.
Over the next five years Fuller made over 120 sides, and his recordings appeared on several labels. His style of singing was rough and direct, and his lyrics explicit and uninhibited as he drew from every aspect of his experience as an underprivileged, blind Black person on the streets—pawnshops, jailhouses, sickness, death—with an honesty that lacked sentimentality. Although he was not sophisticated, his artistry as a folk singer lay in the honesty and integrity of his self-expression. His songs contained desire, love, jealousy, disappointment, menace and humor.
In April 1936, Fuller recorded ten solo performances, and also recorded with guitarist Floyd Council. The following year, after auditioning for J. Mayo Williams, he recorded for the Decca label, but then reverted to ARC. Later in 1937, he made his first recordings with Sonny Terry. In 1938 Fuller, who was described as having a fiery temper, was imprisoned for shooting a pistol at his wife, wounding her in the leg, causing him to miss out on John Hammond's "From Spirituals to Swing" concert in NYC that year. While Fuller was eventually released, it was Sonny Terry who went in his stead, the beginning of a long "folk music" career. Fuller's last two recording sessions took place in New York City during 1940.
Fuller's repertoire included a number of popular double entendre "hokum" songs such as "I Want Some Of Your Pie", "Truckin' My Blues Away" (the origin of the phrase "keep on truckin'"), and "Get Your Yas Yas Out" (adapted as "Get Your Ya-Yas Out" for the origin of a later Rolling Stones album title), together with the autobiographical "Big House Bound" dedicated to his time spent in jail. Though much of his material was culled from traditional folk and blues numbers, he possessed a formidable finger-picking guitar style. He played a steel National resonator guitar. He was criticised by some as a derivative musician, but his ability to fuse together elements of other traditional and contemporary songs and reformulate them into his own performances, attracted a broad audience. He was an expressive vocalist and a masterful guitar player, best remembered for his uptempo ragtime hits including "Step It Up and Go". At the same time he was capable of deeper material, and his versions of "Lost Lover Blues", "Rattlesnakin' Daddy" and "Mamie" are as deep as most Delta blues. Because of his popularity, he may have been overexposed on records, yet most of his songs remained close to tradition and much of his repertoire and style is kept alive by other Piedmont artists to this day.

DEATH

Fuller underwent a suprapubic cystostomy in July 1940 (probably an outcome of excessive drinking) but continued to require medical treatment. He died at his home in Durham, North Carolina on February 13, 1941 at 5:00 PM of pyemia due to an infected bladder, GI tract and perineum, plus kidney failure.
He was so popular when he died that his protégé Brownie McGhee recorded "The Death of Blind Boy Fuller" for the Okeh label, and then reluctantly began a short lived career as Blind Boy Fuller No. 2 so that Columbia Records could cash in on his popularity.

BURIAL LOCATION

Blind Boy Fuller's final resting place is Grove Hill Cemetery, located on private property in Durham, North Carolina. State records indicate that this was once an official cemetery, and Fuller's interment is recorded. The only remaining headstone is that of Mary Caston Langey. The funeral arrangements were handled by McLaurin Funeral Home of Durham, North Carolina, and the burial took place on February 15, 1941.
Blind Boy Fuller has been recognized on two different plaques in the City of Durham. The North Carolina Division of Archives and History plaque is located a few miles north of Fuller's gravesite, along Fayetteville St. in Durham. The City of Durham officially recognized Fuller on July 16, 2001, and the commemorating plaque is located along the American Tobacco Trail, adjacent to the property where Fuller's unmarked grave is located (several hundred feet east of Fayetteville St.).

Source: Wikipedia.

Blind Willie McTell & Curley Weaver "The post-war years 1949-50" (1991)

Curley Weaver

Curley Weaver was one of Atlanta’s most beloved bluesmen and, for decades, Blind Willie McTell’s close friend. He was an exceptionally skilled guitar soloist, with a slide and without, and recorded many records on his own and as a sideman to Blind Willie McTell, Fred McMullen, Buddy Moss, Ruth Willis, and others.  He was also an essential part of two of the best string bands of prewar blues, the Georgia Cotton Pickers and Georgia Browns.

Born on March 25, 1906, Curley James Weaver was raised around Walnut Grove, Georgia. He was childhood friends with Robert and Charlie Hicks, who would make records as Barbecue Bob and Laughing Charlie Lincoln. Weaver’s mother, Savannah “Dip” Weaver, played guitar and taught the three youngsters frailing techniques and open-G tuning. After the Hicks brothers moved to Atlanta, Weaver played house parties and dances with Eddie Mapp, a gifted young harmonica player who excelled at everything from slow, mournful blues to rollicking train imitations.
In 1925 Weaver and Mapp moved to Atlanta, where the Hicks brothers, who’d yet to record, befriended them. With his easygoing personality and knack for accompanying others, Weaver became a favorite among local musicians. Their associate Buddy Moss told Blues Unlimited magazine, “I think people liked Curley best. Curley was a guy, he could really raise behind you and he could take up the slack. You didn’t have to wait for him.” Weaver’s daughter, Cora Mae, was born in May 1926 and spent her childhood in Walnut Grove.
Barbecue Bob arranged for Weaver to record his first 78s for Columbia Records in October 1928. Played without a slide, his first recording, “Sweet Petunia,” was a cover of a song Lucille Bogan had recorded in 1927. Vocally, his performance resembled country musician Jimmie Rodgers, who was enormously popular at the time. The record’s flip side, “No No Blues,” was pure Curley Weaver, with snapping bass strings, driving strums, and the light, wavering slide sound that would become the most distinctive aspect of his guitar style. As his slider reached its notes, Weaver would often give it a short, rapid shake to create a propulsive, wobbling sound. He achieved superb sonic balance between bass and treble, probably using his bare thumb on the bass strings while plucking slid notes with his index, middle, and ring fingers. Few other guitarists played slide this way, and by the mid 1930s this sound had pretty much vanished from the blues. But Weaver was far more than a one-lick wonder with the slider.
Curley Weaver, Eddie Mapp, and guitarists Guy Lumpkin and Slim Barton travelled to Long Island City, New York, in May 1929 to record for the QRS label. A single Weaver 78 resulted from the session – “Dirty Deal Blues,” performed alone, backed with “It’s the Best Stuff Yet” with Mapp on harmonica. During these sessions, Mapp would cut his only records as a leader. He had sole credit for the harmonica train song “Riding the Blinds.” On the flip side, he accompanied Guy Lumpkin on “Decatur Street Drag,” which showcased terrific boogie guitar lines. The harmonica ace also cut five sides credited to Slim Barton & Eddie Mapp, including instrumental covers of “Careless Love” and the Tampa Red-Georgia Tom Dorsey hit “It’s Tight Like That.” Among the musicians at the QRS sessions, only Curley Weaver would record again. Lumpkin and Barton faded from view, and Eddie Mapp was murdered two years later on a seedy Atlanta street corner.
Curley Weaver teamed with Barbecue Bob and Buddy Moss on his next releases. In one of the great prewar blues sessions, the trio recorded in Atlanta’s Campbell Hotel in December 1930 as the Georgia Cotton Pickers. Weaver played brilliant, sparking slide through all four of their songs: “I’m on My Way Down Home,” the Blind Blake-inspired “Diddle-Da-Diddle,” “She Looks So Good,” and “She’s Coming Back Some Cold Rainy Day,” set to the familiar “I’m Sitting on Top of the World” melody. Barbecue Bob played guitar alongside Weaver at this session, while Moss blew hamonica. High-water marks of prewar string-band blues recordings, these would be Barbecue Bob’s final sides.
In October 1931, Weaver accompanied his friend Blind Willie McTell on record for the first time. On “Low Rider’s Blues,” Weaver soloed with a slider as McTell shouted encouragement. The duo also backed Atlanta-based blues singer Ruth Willis on her OKeh releases “Low Down Blues” and “Merciful Blues.” Two days later, Weaver recorded a pair of outstanding vocal duets with Clarence Moore, “Baby Boogie Woogie” and “Wild Cat Kitten.” On these tracks his once-wavering slide style was replaced with dead-on intonation worthy of Tampa Red. A prime researcher of early Georgia blues, Peter Lowry wrote me letter explaining that Weaver had altered his playing style in the early 1930s, switching “from the ‘country’ frailing style he’d learned from Dip to the fingerpicked ‘Piedmont’ style that swept over the Southeast during the late 1920s and early ’30s. This is likely the result of his moving permanently to Atlanta, with the change in audience from Newton County to a broader urban one. Additionally, meeting up with folks like Moss, McTell, and McMullen, plus the impact of phonograph records on player and audience no doubt had an impact. You give the people what they want!”
Weaver played exceptional slide at the marathon January 1933 American Record Company sessions held in New York City with Buddy Moss, Fred McMullen, and Ruth Willis. On January 16th, his first day as leader, he re-cut “No No Blues,” revisiting the idiosyncratic slide style he’d used five years earlier on the original version and doing a lovely falsetto chorus. The next day, he covered a song he’d played as part of the Georgia Cotton Pickers, “Some Cold Rainy Day,” with Ruth Willis adding vocal harmonies. Issued by Banner, Melotone, Oriole, Perfect, and Romeo, this song was credited “Curley Weaver and Ruth Willis.” On the final days of sessions, January 19th, Weaver recorded “Tippin’ Tom” b/w “Birmingham Gambler” under his own name, and then joined Fred McMullen and Buddy Moss to record as the Georgia Browns.
Like the Georgia Cotton Pickers 78s, the Georgia Browns records are fabulous samples of string-band juke music. The goodtime instrumentals “Tampa Strut” and “Decatur Street 81” displayed the guitarists’ unstoppable rhythmic feel and bottleneck finesse, as well as Moss’ mournful harmonica solos. “Next Door Man” featured Weaver playing in standard tuning while McMullen bottlenecked in open G. McMullen sang “Joker Man Blues” and “Next Door Man,” which came out on Vocalion credited to “Jim Miller.” McMullen, who was a regular at the 81 Theater and may have been from Macon, also fronted on several tracks during the 1933 sessions; his “Wait and Listen” bears a similarity to Tommy Johnson’s “Big Road Blues.” On “Rolling Mama,” McMullen and Weaver soloed simultaneously with fingers and slide. In the Perfect label’s publicity photos taken around this time, Curley Weaver held an oddly shaped Kay-Kraft archtop model that had been introduced in 1930, while McMullen held a standard roundhole acoustic. (The fact that Weaver, Moss, and Josh White are all seen holding a Kay archtop in their publicity photos suggests that the guitar may have been a photographer’s prop.) The January 1933 sessions would mark the end of Fred McMullen’s recording career.

Curley Weaver returned to New York City in September 1933 for a week of sessions in the company of Blind Willie McTell and Buddy Moss. McTell played second guitar on records credited to Curley Weaver and Buddy Moss, who in turn backed McTell on two-dozen gospel and blues selections. As David Evans writes in his excellent liner notes for the Columbia two-CD set The Definitive Blind Willie McTell, “Weaver’s work on second guitar, and occasionally second voice, is stunning throughout the session, whether he plays in slide style or fretting with his fingers. He is generally in a different key position or tuning from McTell and provides either a contrasting part or a more complex version of McTell’s part that cuts through the fuller sound of the 12-string. These tracks represent some of the high points in blues duet recording, ranking with the best pieces by the Beale Street Sheiks, Tommy Johnson and Charlie McCoy, or Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe.” Of the seven songs Weaver recorded under his own name, only one 78 – “Black Woman” b/w “City Cell Blues” was released. McTell’s “Don’t You See How This World Made a Change,” with Weaver adding guitar and vocals, came out on Vocalion credited to “Blind Willie and Partner.”

In 1934 Weaver and his girlfriend Cora Thomson moved in with Blind Willie and Ruth McTell at 381 Houston Street N.W. in Atlanta. The couples lived together for several years. On Saturdays, Weaver would often play with McTell at matinees at the 81 Theater. Recording executive Mayo Williams caught a performance there in 1935 and invited Weaver and the McTells to Chicago to record for Decca Records. Weaver joined McTell on “Bell Street Blues” and several other tunes, finessing quick-fingered solos behind McTell’s 12-string bass parts and rhythm. McTell, in turn, backed Weaver on a half-dozen blues as well, including a rare appearance on 6-string guitar on two of Weaver’s best records, “Tricks Ain’t Walking No More” and a cover of Buddy Moss’ “Oh Lawdy Mama.” All six of Weaver’s Chicago recordings came out on 78.

It would be 14 years before Curley Weaver would record again. During the ensuing years, McTell and Weaver continued to perform together in Atlanta and on the road. “They were very good friends,” Willie’s wife Kate Mctell recalled. “Willie would do most of the leading when they played together, and he was always the manager. He would always book the recordings or wherever they play at. And they would pay Willie, and then Willie would pay Curley.”

Soon after World War II broke out, Weaver journeyed back to Walnut Grove to visit his mother and daughter Cora Mae. In her January 1998 Living Blues story, Cora Mae Bryant, who also sang the blues, told David Nelson: “I’ll tell you about the time when he came down and stayed awhile with his mother. That’s when I went back to Atlanta with him. I was 16 years old. And we went up in Alman, Georgia, and he flagged the train down. He took his red handkerchief out of his pocket, and he held it up. Train kept a brakin’ down, slowed on down, and we got on the train. A lot of soldiers was on the train. And they wanted him to play the guitar, and they give him money, you know. I’ll never forget the song he started singin’: ‘I Got the Key to the Highway.’ He started singin’ that. And we went on to Atlanta and I stayed up there with him about two weeks. And that’s when I met Blind Willie McTell. It wasn’t no clubs in Atlanta nobody was playin’ in, not then, not as I know of. I went with my father down in an alley one time, he played down there. Out in somebody’s yard. And he played at a big house there on Butler Street. I never did see him play around no clubs. People were having parties at their house. Everybody gathered up and just played. They was drinkin’ their liquor there, though.”   

McTell and Weaver recorded together for the last time in May 1949. Atlanta’s black radio station announced that Regal Records was auditioning country blues guitarists, and  Blind Willie McTell and Curley Weaver answered the call. All totaled, they recorded twenty blues and gospel selections at a studio on Edgewood Avenue. Weaver recorded three selections with McTell’s support, singing with a strong voice on “Wee Midnight Hours,” “Brown Skin Woman,” and “I Keep on Drinkin’.” Several months later, Weaver recorded four songs on guitar for New York’s Sittin’ In With label. “My Baby’s Gone” b/w “Some Rainy Day” came out as the first 78, followed by “Some Rainy Day” b/w “Trixie.” These would be Curley Weaver’s last recordings.

After that, Cora Mae Bryant told David Nelson, “He stay in Atlanta mostly, but when he did come here to Almon to stay with his mother – I think it was 1950 – they was pickin’ cotton and he’d be on the cotton truck. The truck would go around to pick up a lot of peoples over there in Almon, you know, around Conyers, and come by our house. We’d get on that truck, get off that truck and go out there on the end of the field by ourself, you know, and pick cotton. I had some liquor, you know. I brought him liquor about every day. He always called me Baby. He said, ‘Baby, what you got in that sack?’ I said, ‘Yassir. You know your pint of liquor in there.’ I’d get that pint of liquor, boy, hand it to him, he’d take the top off, hand it back to me. I’d get a little sip. Put it back in his sack. Throw his sack on his back. He’d sing, ‘Your day now brownskin woman. Be mine some day.’ Folks’d get on out there then.”
Weaver continued to perform. “I followed him around up until his illness,” Cora Mae said. “We’d go to fish fries and barbecues, and we’d sing together when we get there. Just different places, parties. Conyers, Loganville, and Covington, Oxford – we be around together. It’s like people give fish fries and barbecues, they sold fish and hot dogs. Wasn’t no beer back there, you know, but plenty corn liquor. My daddy used to get to that party, everbody want to buy him some liquor, to get in the chair and play. He’d say, ‘One at a time.’ ‘Mr. Curley, play me something.’ ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute now. What you want to hear, right there? What you want to hear? All right, I’m gonna get around to y’all now.’ [Laughs.] They loved Curley Weaver. From here to Conyers, everybody around there, they know him.
“It’d be him and Buddy Moss – he’d some down some time and be with him. You get them to together, and there’s a man in Atlanta, his name was Johnny Guthrie. He never did do no recording. You get them three guitars together: oooweee! Boy, some music’s goin’ on. And you couldn’t hear nothin’ on the floor but just shoe heels, hittin’ the floor. Folks be just a dancin’, havin’ a good time. Some of ’em, you know, would act sort of naughty, but he’ll pick up his chair and his guitar and get on that corner, and say, ‘One monkey don’t stop no show.’ Keep on playin’. He look at ’em, he smile and keep a-playin’. Especially when them young women get to flirtin’ with him. He’ll smile at ’em.” Curley Weaver reportedly retired from music when his eyesight failed later in the 1950s.
He died on September 20, 1962, and was buried in a rural churchyard in Almon, Georgia. Pete Lowry paid for his original tombstone, which had “Tricks Ain’t Walking No More” etched beneath the name.

Source: Jas Obrecht Music Archive.

Blind Willie McTell "Atlanta strut" (2004)

Blind Willie McTell "The definitive Blind Willie McTell" (1994)

Blind Willie McTell "Atlanta twelve string" (1992)

Blind Willie McTell "Statesboro blues 1927-35" (2005)

Blind Willie McTell

Among Atlanta’s early bluesmen, no one surpassed Blind Willie McTell, who had it all – a shrewd mind, insightful lyrics, astounding nimbleness on a 12-string guitar, and a sweet, plangent, and slightly nasal voice. Sensitive, confident, and hip-talking, he was a beloved figure in the various communities in which he traveled. He played sublimely, a result of both natural talent and from performing hours a day for people from all walks of life. McTell’s records reveal a phenomenal repertoire of blues, ragtime, hillbilly music, spirituals, ballads, show tunes, and original songs. His records seldom sound high-strung or harrowed, projecting instead an exuberant, upbeat personality and indomitable spirit.  Blind since infancy, Willie Samuel McTier was born in 1901 in the Georgia cottonfield country nine miles south of Thomson and 37 miles west of Augusta. His mother was Minnie Watkins, and his father has been variously identified as Eddie McTier and McTear. (Evidently Willie adapted the phonetic “McTell” spelling taught him in school.) One of McTell’s earliest remembrances was of his mother singing hymns and reading books to him. During his 1940 Library of Congress session, McTell introduced his performance of “Just As Well Get Ready, You Got to Die” by saying, “I will demonstrate how my mother and father used to wander about their work. When they used to sing those old-fashioned hymns. . . . Then you’d see ’em wanderin’ around the house, early in the mornin’, cookin’ breakfast, tryin’ to get ready to go to the fields, tryin’ to make some of the old country money. And way back in them days, I hear one my own mother singed.” Relatives described Minnie Watkins as an outstanding blues guitarist who began teaching her son 6-string guitar when he was young. McTell may have played harmonica and accordion first, and according to his first wife, Kate McTell, he was “also very good on violin, but he didn’t like it. He just loved his guitar.” When Willie was young, his father left the family.
McTell moved with his mother to Statesboro, some seventy miles to the southeast and the center of a prosperous lumber and turpentine industry. For a while they lived in a shack near the railroad tracks, and then moved into a small house on Elm Street. An older blind girl down the street encouraged McTell to seek an education, which he did. A family friend, Josephus “Seph” Stapleton, showed him some guitar. McTell’s father, whom he visited from time to time, also played. By his mid teens, McTell was performing in traveling shows and on the streets of Statesboro. In 1917, his mother remarried and gave birth to his half-brother, Robert Owens, for whom McTell always had a deep fondness. When their mother died in 1920, McTell returned to Thomson while Robert stayed with relatives in Statesboro. “After that I got on my own,” McTell recalled. “I could go anywhere I want without telling anybody where I was.”
During his 1940 Library of Congress session, McTell told John Lomax that from 1922 through ’25 he attended the State Blind School in Macon. There he learned to make brooms, work with clay and leather, and sew. (Later in life he’d make ashtrays, shoes, chairs, and pocketbooks.) He continued his education in private schools in New York City and Michigan, learning to read Braille books and sheet music. He reportedly had perfect pitch, as his half-brother Robert Owens claimed he could call out all the notes on a piano.
McTell became renowned for his unassailable sense of direction and extraordinary powers of perception and memory. He could hear the slightest whisper across a room, recognize hundreds of people by their voices, and navigate his way through city and countryside by using a tapping cane and a sort of personal sonar created by making a clucking sound with his tongue. Relatives described him as “earsighted.” In her 1975 interview with David Evans, published in Blues Unlimited, Kate McTell said, “He felt like he could see in his world just like we could see in our world. And he could tell you how long hair was, what color it was. And if you walked up to him and spoke to him, he could tell you whether you were a black person or a white person. And he could tell you how tall you were, or whether you were short – just by listening to your voice. And he could tell you whether you were a heavyset person or a thin person. He was marvelous. He could go anywhere he wanted to go. He had a stick, and he’d go ‘Tch, tch, tch, tch,’ to the sound of that. He’d never bump or run into anything.”
Photographs reveal that McTell favored Stella 12-strings throughout his career. Kate McTell recalled that he bought his guitars at a store on Decatur Street near Five Points. “He always liked the store. They would always tune it up, you know, and everything, and he’d take it out and tune it himself. And he could hit the box and tell whether it was any good or not. And he always bought his guitars there. If his guitar get to where he didn’t want to play it anymore, he would take it and trade it in or put it away and buy him another one. He’d never have ’em repaired.” He carried his guitar with him everywhere and treated it with great care. “He would never put his guitar in the back of nobody’s car,” Kate told Evans. “He’d always carry it on his back and hold it in his lap. He loved that guitar. He called it his baby.” At first McTell had used a bottleneck for slide, later switching to a metal ring or thimble. One of his neighbors told researcher Pete Lowry that McTell had “a bunch of bottlenecks in his coat pocket” and used different ones for different songs. He favored standard and open-G tunings and, unlike most other bluesmen in Atlanta, had a pronounced ragtime influence.
Blind Willie McTell launched his recording career in October 1927, cutting a pair of 78s during the Victor label’s field trip to Atlanta. After a pair of slideless blues, “Stole Rider Blues” and “Writin’ Paper Blues,” McTell recorded the first of many slide masterpieces, “Mama, Taint Long Fo’ Day,” working his bass and treble strings in a manner that had more in common with Texas gospel great Blind Willie Johnson than the Atlanta bluesmen. McTell signed a contract with Victor and a year later recorded two more 78s, including another masterwork, “Statesboro Blues.” While this song is best known today as Duane Allman’s signature bottleneck song with the Allman Brothers Band, the McTell version is slideless. And credit where credit is due: Duane Allman did not invent the “Statesboro Blues” slide figures – these were created by Jesse Ed Davis on an earlier cover on Taj Mahal’s 1967 debut album.
All of McTell’s initial Victor 78s were hardcore blues. In October 1929, he moonlighted for the first time with Columbia Records, which would release many of his more adventurous secular sides. McTell was in extraordinary form at his debut Columbia session, held in Atlanta. Among the four titles recorded on October 30th were two of his very best records, “Atlanta Strut” and “Travelin’ Blues.” In “Atlanta Strut” he sang of meeting up with a “gang of stags” and a little girl who looked “like a lump of lord have mercy,” and then embarked upon a lyrical journey that warps and mutates like a Dali painting. Meanwhile, his booming 12-string imitated a bass viol, cackling hen, crowing rooster, piano, slide guitar, even a man walking up the stairs! He fingerpicked “Travelin’ Blues” with extraordinary finesse, using his slider to mimic a train’s engine, bell, and whistle, and then doing a note-perfect chorus from “Poor Boy.” Columbia identified him on records as Blind Sammie, but for anyone who’d heard the Victor 78s, there was no mistaking who this artist was.
McTell was back recording for Columbia in April 1930, and the label promoted “Talking to Myself” with a newspaper ad. Columbia Records brought Blind Willie Johnson, the sublime Texas gospel slider, and his traveling companion, female singer Willie B. Harris, to Atlanta to record spiritual sides in April 1930. Reference books list McTell as playing at these sessions, but the 78s themselves reveal that Johnson is the only guitarist. It is certain, though, that McTell and Johnson became friends and toured together. As McTell told John Lomax in 1940, “Blind Willie Johnson was a personal pal of mine. He and I played together on many different parts of the states and different parts of the country from Maine to Mobile Bay.” McTell recalled that Johnson used a steel ring for slide and that the two of them enjoyed playing “I Got to Cross the River Jordan” together. When Lomax asked McTell if Johnson was a “good guitar picker,” McTell responded, “Excellent good!”
McTell’s next flurry of sessions took place in October 1931. On the 23rd, he cut the  Columbia 78 “Talkin’ to Myself” b/w “Razor Ball,” and OKeh’s “Broke Down Engine” b/w “Southern Can Is Mine” He also backed Mary Willis on “Talkin’ to You Wimmen About the Blues” and three other songs. Curley Weaver, who’d become fast friends with McTell around 1930, accompanied him in the studio for the first time a week later. McTell, working as “Georgia Bill,” played unsurpassed ragtime-influenced 12-string on his unaccompanied “Georgia Rag,” while the 78’s flip side, “Low Rider’s Blues” featured Weaver soloing with a bottleneck as McTell shouted encouragement. The duo also backed Willis on her OKeh releases “Low Down Blues” and “Merciful Blues.” Perhaps a result of his performance with McTell, Weaver was invited back to record for OKeh on November 2, cutting duets of “Baby Boogie Woogie” and “Wild Cat Kitten” with singer Clarence Moore.
As the Depression deepened, blues record sales plummeted. For example, when “Travelin’ Blues” came out in 1930, it sold more than 4,200 copies, but when “Atlanta Blues” came out in May 1932, only 400 copies were manufactured. McTell’s “Southern Can Is Mine,” a gem of a performance, sold only 500 copies. McTell’s sole session of 1932 coupled him with another female singer, Ruby Glaze, and renamed him Hot Shot Willie. Their 78 of “Lonesome Day Blues” sold only 124 copies and is among his rarest records today. Meanwhile, sales of 78s by white musicians were much stronger: 78 Quarterly estimated that McTell’s Victor label mate Jimmie Rodgers’ “Mississippi River Blues” sold 47,355 copies and the Carter Family’s “On the Rock Where Moses Stood” sold 16,407.
Despite the discouraging sales, McTell’s luck at scoring record sessions held. In September 1933 he accompanied Curley Weaver and Buddy Moss to New York City for the marathon ARC session that, in hindsight, was the swansong of the early Atlanta blues guitar scene. McTell played second guitar on records credited to Curley Weaver and Buddy Moss, who in turn backed McTell on two-dozen gospel and blues selections. As David Evans writes in his excellent liner notes for the Columbia two-CD set The Definitive Blind Willie McTell, “Weaver’s work on second guitar, and occasionally second voice, is stunning throughout the session, whether he plays in slide style or fretting with his fingers. He is generally in a different key position or tuning from McTell and provides either a contrasting part or a more complex version of McTell’s part that cuts through the fuller sound of the 12-string. These tracks represent some of the high points in blues duet recording, ranking with the best pieces by the Beale Street Sheiks, Tommy Johnson and Charlie McCoy, or Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe.” McTell and Moss each recorded two versions of “Broke Down Engine” and covered Bumble Bee Slim’s “B and O Blues” at the session, with Weaver accompanying each of them. Moss remembered that McTell acted as their leader in New York, both at the session and in navigating subways. While the Moss and Weaver 78s came out on budget labels like Banner, Conqueror, Melotone, and Romeo, McTell’s dozen issued sides were on the premium Vocalion label. His “Don’t You See How This World Made a Change,” with Weaver adding guitar and vocals, came out credited to “Blind Willie and Partner.”
While McTell kept a home base in Atlanta during the early 1930s, he rambled far and wide. During summers, he played for vacationers in Miami and the Georgia Sea Islands. When the tobacco crop came in July and August, he’d play at warehouses and hotels around Statesboro and further east in Winston-Salem and Durham, North Carolina. He refused to accept car rides from strangers and almost always journeyed by train, bus, and trolley, confident in his ability to support himself by playing for tips in train cars, stations and depots, small clubs, and on the street. He acted as his own manager and agent, arranging bookings by telephone. He had strong networks of friends and relatives, especially around Thomson and Statesboro, where he returned often and was universally known by his childhood nicknames of “Doog” and “Blind Doogie.”
In Thomson, he enjoyed sitting under a relative’s tree and playing for friends and passersby. On weekends he’d entertain at picnics, juke joints, and house parties. His Sunday mornings were typically spent playing guitar at the Jones Grove Baptist Church. In Statesboro, McTell enjoyed visiting his half-brother Robert and a network of girlfriends, one of whom would chauffeur him around in an automobile he’d bought her. Statesboro residents recalled him playing ragtime, blues, and pop songs for ladies clubs, school assemblies, in front of hot dogs stands and hotels, and in the homes of whites and blacks alike. He played spiritual music at a couple of local churches, sometimes accompanying gospel quartets. He collaborated with many musicians in the area, especially an outstanding slide guitar player named Lord Randolph Byrd, who was known locally as Blind Lloyd and never recorded. The two traveled together to many Georgia towns, and they remained lifelong friends.
On January 10, 1934, Blind Willie McTell married Ruthy Kate Williams, a student he’d heard singing at a high school ceremony in Augusta. McTell was drawn to her strong, countrified voice, and it turned out their mothers had been friends and had jokingly promised their young children to each other. In her 1975 interview with David Evans, Kate McTell said that as newlyweds she and Willie moved into an apartment at 381 Houston Street N.W. in Atlanta. Curley Weaver and his longtime girlfriend, Cora Thomson, also moved in, and the two couples lived there for several years. Kate joined the choir at the Big Bethel A.M.E. Church, and her husband paid for her to attend college and earn a nursing degree. While she was in school, Kate told Evans, Willie was often on the road: “I said to Willie once, I said, ‘Willie,’ I said, ‘you got me stuck here in nursing school and you stay gone all the time.’ He said, ‘Baby, I was born a rambler. I’m gonna ramble until I die,’ he said, ‘but I’m preparing you to live after I’m gone.’ He did. He sure did.” Kate occasionally helped Willie with his songwriting, describing to David Evans, “He’d just think ’em up. And he’d come home and maybe give me a line or two to write. And then he’d say, ‘What did I tell you to write last night?’ I said, ‘Such and such a thing.’ He says, ‘Oh, well, this’ll be another one. Turn over to another page and write this down.’ The way he composed would be, write down words. Then we would sing ’em and see how they sound with the guitar. Sometimes he’d change ’em around.” She also remembered that he’d spontaneously create blues songs as he played.
On occasion, Kate sang spirituals with her husband and danced onstage when he played matinees at the 81 Theatre, sometimes with Curley Weaver sitting in. After seeing one such performance there in 1935, recording executive Mayo Williams invited the McTells and Weaver to Chicago to record for Decca Records. At these Chicago sessions, the McTells performed several old-time gospel slide tunes reminiscent of Blind Willie Johnson with Willie B. Harris. Weaver joined McTell on “Bell Street Blues” and several other secular tunes, finessing quick-fingered solos behind McTell’s 12-string bass parts and rhythm. McTell backed Weaver on a half-dozen blues as well, including a rare appearance on 6-string guitar on two of Weaver’s best records, “Oh Lawdy Mama” and “Tricks Ain’t Walking No More.” McTell was paid a hundred dollars per side – excellent pay during the Depression – although few of these records were issued at the time.
None of the records from his next session, held by Vocalion in Augusta in July 1936 with Piano Red, were issued. According to Kate, “They said he sang and played too loud. You know, he had a real loud voice. He thought he [Piano Red] was too high for his type of music. You see, Willie played a guitar, and the piano would drown the guitar out. And Willie couldn’t play with him. He couldn’t keep up with him, you know. He played so fast.”
For two summers, the McTells toured with a medicine show that featured a pair of blackface comedians and a barker who sold “rattlesnake liniment.” Kate’s role, she explained to Cheryl Evans, was to dance while her husband played: “I Charlestoned and Black Bottomed and tap danced. We did shows in Louisville, Kentucky, and we did a lot through Georgia, too, during the summer months when I wasn’t in school.” In the old minstrel tradition, the show’s comedians wore blackface. The troupe traveled by bus, train, and car, and McTell was paid a salary. Occasionally they’d set up a tent, but most of the time they performed outdoors in courthouse squares.
Around 1938, the McTells traveled to California and visited Oakland for a week. According to Kate, they stayed “where all the winos would be. I guess that’s what they called it. Anyway, I was real shocked to see people like that.” When Kate’s school was in session, McTell would often travel with Curley Weaver. “They were very good friends,” Kate recalled. “Willie would do most of the leading when they played together, and he was always the manager. He would always book the recordings or wherever they play at. And they would pay Willie, and then Willie would pay Curley.”
Eventually, the McTells moved to an apartment on Atlanta’s northeast side, near downtown. Kate recalled that Willie was particularly fond of collard greens, potatoes, and potato pie. They had a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and a music room where he stored his instruments. McTell especially enjoyed his music room, where he’d read Braille books from the library, take naps on his couch before going out to work, and enjoy a hot toddy before bed. He often played at Yates’ Drug Store on the corner of Butler and Auburn during the day, and spent his every evening serenading customers in parked cars at the Pig ’n’ Whistle, a drive-in barbecue joint on Ponce de Leon Avenue. As Kate explained to Cheryl Evans, “We call it a carhop. Different cars would call for him, you know. This car would say, ‘I want the musician over here.’ They’d say, ‘Well, I got him for an hour,’ or so long. And they would just pay him for that length of time. And then another car would call for him. He was paid by the peoples in the cars, and the Pig ’n’ Whistle paid him too. He would take requests, but he was just continually playing unless they requested certain songs.” On Saturdays, the McTells would perform at the 81 Theatre from 4:00 until 9:00, and then Willie would head over to the Pig ’n’ Whistle. On Sundays, the McTells occasionally performed at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church.
In one of the more fortuitous meetings in blues history, folklorist John Lomax and his wife found McTell wailing away at the Pig ’n’ Whistle in November 1940 and brought him to their hotel to record for the Library of Congress’ Archive of American Folk Song. On the drive to the hotel McTell called out directions and pointed to landmarks as if he could see them. This non-commercial session yielded a breathtaking array of folk ballads and spirituals, as well as a blues, a rag, a pop song, and insightful monologues on old songs, blues history, and life itself. “Dying Crapshooter’s Blues,” with its poetic imagery and ambitious arrangement, had been previously recorded by blueswomen in the 1920s. “Delia,” later covered by Johnny Cash, came out of the 19th-century ballad tradition.
McTell’s lonesome slide during the spirituals “I Got to Cross the River Jordan,” “Old Time Religion,” and “Amazing Grace” recalled Blind Willie Johnson’s 78s, especially in the way he’d use his slider to produce a string of notes and harmonic overtones from a single strike of the string. Lomax was aware of this connection, introducing “I Got to Cross the River Jordan” by saying, “This is a song played by Blind Willie McTell, which he says he used to sing and play with Blind Willie Johnson.” McTell quickly added, “This is a song that I’m gonna play that we all used to play in the country – an old jubilee melody.” Unlike Johnson, who played in open D, McTell played his version in open G capoed up two frets. McTell prefaced “Amazing Grace” by describing how it was played on banjo in the old-time churches of his youth. When he finished his instrumental performance, he said, “Now, that’s a song that our mothers and fathers used to hum back in the days when they’d be pickin’ cotton, pullin’ corn – farmer’s work.”
In less than an hour, McTell gave the American public some of the finest records he’d ever make. But the Library of Congress session did not go easily for McTell. One of the more telling exchanges between the folklorist and the bluesman occurred when Lomax asked McTell if he knew “any songs about colored people havin’ hard times here in the South . . . Complainin’ about the hard times and sometimes mistreatment of the whites. Have you got any songs that talk about that?” “No, sir,” McTell responded. “I haven’t, not at the present time, because the whites is mighty good to the Southern people, as far as I know.” Lomax pressed on: “‘Ain’t It Hard to Be a Nigger, Nigger’ – do you know that one?”  “No,” McTell answered. “That’s not our time.” A moment later Lomax observed, “You keep movin’ around like you’re uncomfortable. What’s the matter, Willie?” McTell quickly shifted to another topic: “Well, I was in an automobile accident last night, little shook up. No one got hurt, but it was all jostled up mighty bad. Shake up – still sore from it, but no one got hurt.”
Not long after America entered World War II, Willie and Kate McTell separated. She moved to Augusta and became a Civil Service nurse, while Willie stayed in Atlanta and eventually began living with Helen Edwards, who took the name Helen McTell and stayed with Willie until her death in 1958. During the 1940s McTell began receiving assistance checks for his blindness and, without any record deals, mainly played house parties and at the Pig ’n’ Whistle. He continued to visit relatives in Statesboro, where he’d play at the Silver Moon, and Augusta, where Good Time Charlie’s tavern was a favorite venue.
While the jump blues of T-Bone Walker and other electric bluesmen had become a dominant sound on jukeboxes and radio broadcasts just after World War II, by the late 1940s the stripped-down, downhome music of John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and Lightnin’ Hopkins was beginning to attract an audience. In May 1949, an executive from the New Jersey-based Regal Records advertised on Atlanta’s black radio for country blues guitarists. Blind Willie McTell and Curley Weaver answered the call, cutting twenty blues and gospel selections for Fred Mendelshon at a studio on Edgewood Avenue. These excellent-sounding records reveal a wealth of innovative bass lines, interesting chords, masterfully fingerpicked solos, and sublime slide, especially on the songs McTell fronted. Their exciting “You Can’t Get That Stuff No More” revisited a 1932 Tampa Red hit, and McTell’s remakes of “Love Changin’ Blues” and “Savannah Women” featured sweet and low-down slide. “Pal of Mine” was a Tin Pan Alley pop song McTell had sung with medicine shows. Weaver, who played a 6-string at the session, recorded three selections with McTell’s support, singing with a strong voice on “Wee Midnight Hours,” “Brown Skin Woman,” and “I Keep on Drinkin’.” From this session, Regal issued only a few songs, although today they’re all available on the Biograph CD Pig ’n’ Whistle Red. On the issued 78s, “Hide Me in Thy Bosom” and “It’s My Desire” were credited to “Blind Willie,” and one of the blues songs identified him as “Pig ’n’ Whistle Red.”
Several months later, Weaver recorded two solo singles on acoustic guitar for the Sittin’ In With label, including spirited remakes of “Some Rainy Day” and “Tricks Ain’t Walkin’ No More.” These were his last recordings. He formed a trio with Buddy Moss and Johnnie Guthrie, playing around Georgia in the early 1950s, and then retired from music when his eyesight failed later in the decade. He died in 1962 and was buried in a rural churchyard in Almon, Georgia, where “Tricks Ain’t Walking No More” is etched beneath the name on his tombstone.
Blind Willie McTell’s next sessions took place during autumn 1949, when Ahmet Ertegun convinced him to make recordings for his fledgling Atlantic Records. “I had collected many recordings he had made for RCA Victor, and I thought I recognized his voice, but I wasn’t sure,” Ertegun wrote to filmmaker David Fulmer in 1992. “I asked him his name and discovered he was ‘the’ famous Blind Willie McTell. He spoke of having no interest in recording anything except religious music, and would only play the blues if I would release it under another name. Therefore, we decided on the pseudonym Barrelhouse Sammy. He was a charming, ebullient, but soft-mannered person.” For these Atlantic sessions, McTell reprised songs he’d recorded for Lomax – “Kill It Kid,” “Delia,” “Dying Crapshooter’s Blues” – as well as blues, a rag, and several spirituals played slide-style. With its thunderous bass runs and behind-the-bridge strums, McTell’s cover of “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” almost sounded like prescient rock and roll. On subsequent listening to the acetates, though, Atlantic executives apparently deemed McTell’s solitary blues a thing of the past, and his sole Atlantic single, “Kill It Kid” backed with “Broke Down Engine Blues,” came out credited to “Barrelhouse Sammy (The Country Boy).” During the 1970s, most of the session was issued on the excellent Atlantic album Atlanta Twelve String. The hi-fi sound of these recordings is quite extraordinary. Steve Hoffman, renowned for his work remastering classic albums, explains how McTell was likely recorded:  “I asked Tom Dowd about it. Tom didn’t record it, but he knew how it was done. He told me they used a portable Magnecord PT-6 full-track octal machine and a single RCA ribbon mike, a 77DX, and Scotch 112 tape. Sometimes the simple things in life are best.”
In 1950 McTell and Helen Edwards moved to 1003 Dimmock Street, the last residence he’d have in Atlanta. McTell began frequenting the Blue Lantern Club, an all-white restaurant on Ponce De Leon Avenue, performing tableside as well as in the parking lot. He sang tenor for the Glee Club of the Metropolitan Atlanta Association for the Colored Blind and played religious music on radio broadcasts from stations in Atlanta and Decatur. Around 1952 he acquired an electric guitar, but according to Kate, whom he’d visit once or twice a year, “He just liked his [acoustic] 12-string better, and he quit it.”
Overweight, drinking heavily, suffering from diabetes, and occasionally losing his balance, McTell seldom traveled beyond Atlanta, Thomson, and Statesboro in the mid 1950s, and he required hospital care from time to time. In September 1956, McTell made his final recordings for Ed Rhodes, who owned a record store on Peachtree Street near the Blue Lantern Club. McTell was supplied with corn liquor, and while he seemed to get looser as the session progressed, he played with drive and precision. McTell played all 18 selections without a slide, covering songs from his early days, his Library of Congress session, and his postwar sessions with Curley Weaver. He also covered pop songs, old blues by Blind Blake and the Hokum Boys, and hillbilly numbers such as “Wabash Cannonball,” telling Rhodes, “I jump ’em from other writers, but I arrange ’em my way.”
McTell quit playing blues soon afterward, when he got the calling to preach. He became a deacon at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church, using a Braille bible and dedicating himself to helping blind people. His health declined rapidly after his companion Helen died in November 1958, and in the spring of 1959 he suffered a stroke that caused partial paralysis. McTell’s cousin Eddie McTear moved him back to Thomson. That summer he suffered another stroke and was taken to the Milledgeville State Hospital, where he died from a cerebral hemorrhage on August 19,1959. Among the items in his estate were an acoustic 6-string guitar, three acoustic 12-strings, and an electric guitar and amplifier. McTell’s wish to be buried with one of his 12-string guitar was not honored, and due to a stonecarver’s error, his original tombstone read:
“Eddie McTier
1898
Aug 19 1959
At Rest”
Thirty years later, a proper gravestone and roadside historical marker were placed near Blind Willie McTell’s grave in the Jones Grove Baptist Church cemetery, seven miles south of Thomson. In 1983, Bob Dylan paid him tribute in his wonderful ballad “Blind Willie McTell,” singing, “Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell.” (This was issued on Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series 1-3.) A decade later, Dylan covered McTell’s “Broke Down Engine” and “Delia” on Love Gone Wrong.
While Blind Willie McTell, Curley Weaver, the Hicks brothers, Peg Leg Howell, and their prewar contemporaries created stacks of wonderful blues recordings, precious little of their influence resounds in modern music. Unlike their contemporaries in Chicago and Mississippi, their sound did not become a cornerstone of postwar blues and rock and roll, but rather a glimpse back at a bygone era. Fortunately, virtually everything they recorded is now available on CD, and much of it sounds just as remarkable and exhilarating as when first recorded. And today, many Georgia blues artists, some descendents of the original bluesmen, keep their songs alive on stage and record.

Source: Jas Obrecht Music Archive.