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 or 1889. All are given in his various biographies,…

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. Henderson, a former slave, and his wife Eliza, ran a family string band around the turn of the…

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 playing at plantation square dances. Henderson, born around 1850, also ran a string band, the…

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 place in Birmingham, England, back in 1976. Since this rant was…

Updated: 19 March, 2021. Once, rock music was simple. We had hard-rock, and not-so-hard rock, otherwise called pop. Soft rock was yet to evolve. So, when a certain rock ‘n’ roll themed restaurant first opened its doors in London in 1971, its owners named it “Hard Rock”, cos that’s what the music press in Britain called contemporary music…