by Paul Merry | Jul 19, 2018 | blogs, stories |
“Always fun reading, Paul. Thanks.” Jason Vivone (@JVivone), leader of the Billy Bats, Kansas City. In this short series, I’m going to highlight four extremely influential, but mainly unknown nineteenth-century blues guitar pioneers, each of whom...
by Paul Merry | Jun 25, 2018 | blogs, stories |
North East Texas. 1899. A tender-aged ‘songster’, as roaming black minstrels were known back then, had travelled from his home in Louisiana around 1899 to busk in neighbouring Texas. Whether the boy was 10, 11 or 14 depends on which birth date you believe – 1885, 1888...
by Paul Merry | Apr 20, 2018 | blogs, stories |
George W. Thomas Jnr, Hersal and Hociel Thomas, Sippie Wallace (nee Thomas) and Bernice Edwards. Last time, we talked about the family of Henderson Chatmon, the ‘musicianer’, as musicians called themselves in the nineteenth century, from Bolton, Mississippi....
by Paul Merry | Apr 16, 2018 | blogs, stories |
Is Bolton, Mississippi, the true birthplace of the blues? Anyone who knows the Mississippi Sheiks knows, at their core, were three sons of the nineteenth century ‘musicianer’, Henderson Chatmon, a one-time slave from Terry, Mississippi, noted for his brilliant violin...
by Paul Merry | Apr 4, 2018 | blogs, stories |
Americans should stop abusing Eric Clapton. He was a phenomenally good blues guitarist. There’s been much hullabaloo recently on social media over racist comments made by the guitarist Eric Clapton while off his head on booze and drugs 42 long years ago. This took...
