Introduction | The Region | Topics and Terms | Blues Artists | Bryant, Daniel and Mitchell | Audio Interview Excerpts |Assorted Audio Performances |Recommended Resources

Barfield, Cecil (a/k/a William Robertson)
"Born in 1922, William Robertson was a farmer all his life until he had to retire because of a back injury. Robertson began playing blues when he was five years old on a cooking oil can he had rigged up with a neck and one string. 'Well, I left the cooking oil can off and put a wire upside of the house,' he said, 'and I played that with a bottleneck.' Robertson began playing guitar when he was 12, and 'started off ragging it, playing them rag pieces,' which were traditional to the Chattahoochee Valley" (George Mitchell, from In Celebration of a Legacy: The Traditional Arts of the Lower Chattahoochee Valley). In Jim Pettigrew's article on Georgia blues entitled "Can' Cha Hear Me Cryin' Ooo-hooo," Barfield states: "I was listenin' to Bo Miller and some o' them--they were the best around here then--and then I took up the guitar myself. I don't know how many I've worn out since then. There wasn't any radio around here then. We only had record players, you know, the kind that you fold up like a suitcase. It was a long time before there was any radio in these parts....Oh, I used to play a lot. I played for both whites and colored, dances, parties, just about any occasion. There was a few of us and we'd go around all over the country. People were always calling on us. They'd never let me alone...."
View liner notes for William Robertson's LP South Georgia Blues

Bryant, Precious
Precious Bryant was born Precious Bussey on January 4, 1942 in Talbot County, Georgia, just east of Columbus. The third child of nine, with seven sisters and a brother, was born into a family of traditional musicians who lived in a close-knit community, surrounded by many fine players and singers of traditional blues and gospel.

Precious recalls a childhood filled with many different kinds of homemade music. Her mother was a piano player and an avid singer of church songs. Her father, Lonnie James Bussey, was a traditional blues player. Her uncle, George Henry Bussey, served as her principal mentor and taught her to play bottleneck guitar and to sing the old blues tunes. Several of her male cousins were members of a "fife and drum" group, a rare type of folk band which, with snare drums and homemade "reeds," often paraded and serenaded at community celebrations, fish frys and on holidays around Talbot and Harris counties.

The first instrument Precious Bryant ever attempted to play was her father's old "home guitar," which was so big that the six-year-old Precious could not lift it by herself. She fondly recalls her father placing the guitar in her lap and encouraging his daughter to "take it up" and learn to play. At age nine she had advanced in her playing skills to the point that he bought her an instrument of her own - a Silvertone guitar from Sears & Roebuck.

Precious' early performances were in the Baptist Church. She and her siblings sang spiritual songs together as The Bussey Sisters, with Precious and one of her older sisters accompanying on guitar. Outside of church, Precious was asked to play at parties and talent shows in and around Talbot County.

Her emerging repertoire was rooted in the traditional sounds of the lower Chattahoochee River Valley, but it also began to reflect the influence of the rhythm and blues and early rock 'n' roll that Precious heard on the radio. Precious explains, "I listened to Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters and all them. Elmore James and blues like that. I would listen to a song on the radio and write the words down and I wouldn't worry about the music 'cause I could get the music. All I wanted to know was the words."

Folklorist George Mitchell first recorded Precious in 1969. Over a decade later, at Mitchell's coaxing, she reluctantly agreed to play at the Columbus, Georgia Chattahoochee Folk Festival. Precious was an instant hit. Her naturally warm stage presence and lively guitar style, combined with her excellent voice, quickly won her a devoted audience. Since her debut in Columbus, Precious Bryant has performed for scores of audiences in the United States and abroad. In addition to the Chattahoochee Folk Festival, notable venues include the Blues to Bop Festival in Lugano, Switzerland, the North Georgia Folk Festival in Athens, the Canadian Folk Festival, and the Alabama Folk Festival in Montgomery.

These days Precious plays mainly at home, with an occasional show in Columbus or Atlanta. To see Precious play live is a treat. She entices the audience, telling them, "Pat your hands together, ain't nobody sick, ain't nobody dead." Along with Precious' own witty standards, any song she chooses to play is instantly transformed into a moving arrangement stamped with the attitude and assuredness of the true performer she has become.

Precious Bryant is a rarity. Truly traditional female blues players, especially those as vocally powerful and technically skilled as Precious, have always been few. In the 1930s, Columbus, Georgia's Gertrude "Ma" Rainey became known as the "Mother of the Blues." Now, as we enter a new century, Talbot County's Precious Bryant has secured her place in the world of traditional American music as Georgia's "Daughter of the Blues." (press bio and photo courtesy of Terminus Records)

Bunkley, Jim
From George Mitchell's liner notes for the Revival Records LP George Henry Bussey and Jim Bunkley:

Bussey, George Henry
From George Mitchell's liner notes for the Revival Records LP George Henry Bussey and Jim Bunkley:

Coleman, Bob
Bob Coleman was originally from the Columbus area but moved to Cincinnati in the 1920's, where he helped form The Cincinnati Jug Band. The Cincinnati Jug Band's track "The Newport Blues" is featured on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music.

Daniel, George

Davis, Cliff
"Cliff Davis was born [in 1913] in Alabama, moving to Stewart County, Georgia...as a small child. A farmer, he used to sing field hollers to relieve the tedium of his work." (George Mitchell, from In Celebration of a Legacy: The Traditional Arts of the Lower Chattahoochee Valley)

Darby, Tom & Jimmie Tarlton

Georgia Fife and Drum Band
Bruce Bastin provides some excellent information about this group: "Perhaps Mitchell's most interesting discovery was the presence of a fife-and-drum tradition in the country between Waverly Hall and Talbotton, northeast of Columbus. Until recently it was assumed that the tradition of fife-and-drum music was uniquely that of north Mississippi around Senatobia...The similarities of the music of the Senatobia and Waverly Hall groups hints that the music was probably more widespread than appreciated....The Georgia fife-and-drum group was essentially a family band comprising J.W. Jones on bamboo cane fife and his brother James on kettle drum, with the bass drum played by either a younger brother, Willie C. Jones, or a cousin, Floyd Bussey."

Grant, Bud
Grant made his first guitar from a poplar tree. As a young boy, he played "frolicking" dance music at neighborhood parties (even before he was twelve years old). His uncle bought him a mail-order guitar from Sears Roebuck for $4.95, and he started playing blues in 1940, " learning to play from listening to records." He mentioned in an interview: "I can play a little rock 'n' roll myself now, but I always fancy blues the most."

Grant, William
"William Grant, [born in 1908], was born near Pittsview, Alabama...He was given a harmonica one Christmas, and he says he learned how to play it while sitting on a plow in the fields. 'I played at parties in the countries,' he said. 'I used to pick guitar, but I come to religion and I put the guitar down. I promised the Lord I wouldn't fool with a guitar no more, but I didn't promise Him I wouldn't fool with a harp. I always keep a harp." (George Mitchell, from In Celebration of a Legacy: The Traditional Arts of the Lower Chattahoochee Valley)

Harris, Jimmy Lee and Eddie
Jimmy Lee Harris was born in 1935 in Seale, Alabama. He later moved 10 miles away to Phenix City, Alabama. '"The first instrument he played was the mouthbow, which he made himself when he was nine. His parents bought him a guitar three years later, and he learned to play from a woman named Seesa Vaughn." Jimmy Lee's brother Eddie is also a blues musician. (George Mitchell, from In Celebration of a Legacy: The Traditional Arts of the Lower Chattahoochee Valley)

Hunt, Dixon
According to Bruce Bastin, the parochial nature of Hunt's performing territory--little more than sixty miles end to end--was typical of Southeast blues musicians. Dixon Hunt was taught to play by Cliff Scott.

Macon, Albert

Paschal, Green
Born around 1927 in Talbotton, Georgia, Paschal started playing music relatively late in life, sometime in the 1950s. "I used to play nothing but the blues before I joined the church," he says, "I joined the chuch about fifteen years [ago] and I quit playing blues...Good old church songs, these old-fashioned songs, I likes 'em...I don't like these jumped up songs that people sing now...I believe in the old way, I just like old songs, the spirit of those old songs. Now those songs that they sing now, they're all right, them that want to sing 'em, they good, I like to hear 'em singing, but it ain't for me..."

Video:

Rainey, "Ma"

Thomas, Lonzie
" 'I watched my daddy's fingers on the guitar and I caught it,' remembered Lonzie Thomas, who was born in Lee County, Alabama in 1921. He was shot in the face and blinded at the age of 22. 'After I got blind, I got more interested in playing and singing,' he said. 'It was something to keep my mind off worrying.' It was also one of the few ways a blind man could make a living, and he began playing on the streets of Opelika and Columbus for tips and at parties." (George Mitchell, from In Celebration of a Legacy: The Traditional Arts of the Lower Chattahoochee Valley)

Link:
Lonzie Thomas' "Red Cross Store"
http://www.hcc-al-ga.org/folk_index.cfm?GetPage=2

Warren, J.W. The following excerpt is from George Mitchell, In Celebration of a Legacy: The Traditional Arts of the Lower Chattahoochee Valley. Follow the link to The Musicmaker Foundation's recording of J. W. Warren.

White, Bud
White learned to play the song "Sixteen Snow White Horses" from a traveling bluesman from Florida.

From 1969 until the early eighties, George Mitchell recorded over two dozen lower Chattahoochee blues artists. The list below represents the songs that were recorded by more than one artist.

The blues artists that Mitchell recorded are listed below. The date in parentheses after the musician's name indicates when the recordings were made.

For information on songs recorded by specific lower Chattahoochee artists consult the artist repertoire index.

Introduction | The Region | Topics and Terms | Blues Artists | Bryant, Daniel and Mitchell | Audio Interview Excerpts |Assorted Audio Performances |Recommended Resources

Published: 16 March 2004

© 2004 Steve Bransford and Southern Spaces