Blind Willie McTell - ProfilesArchive

About Me

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Ruby Glaze & Blind Willie (aka Blind Willie McTell) - "Mama, let me scoop for you"
Ruby Glaze & Blind Willie (aka Blind Willie McTell) - "Mama, let me scoop for you / Rollin' Mama Blues" (US 78 Bluebird 6007)
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Blind Sammie (aka Blind Willie McTell) - "Talking To Myself"
Blind Sammie (aka Blind Willie McTell) - "Talking To Myself / Razor ball" (US 78 Columbia 14551)
"I was born on May 5, 1898 (although 1901 has also been given as my year of birth) south of Thomson, Georgia, about thirty miles west of the city of Augusta. In 1907 I moved to Statesboro with my mother. After her death in 1910 I moved back to Thomson. I attended schools for the blind in Macon, Georgia and New York.
I always played a twelve string guitar, but with an intricate, six string style - it sounds quite like a piano in my phrasing and technique - and I sang in a high, clear voice that had me endeared to record engineers of the day.
After spending time in travelling shows and having learned 12 string guitar and harmonica, I made my first recordings in 1927, which included 'Mama, 'Tain't Long Fo' Day'. The following year a further Atlanta session produced 'Statesboro Blues'. A year later a third session produced another classic, 'Travelin Blues'.
In a thirty-year recording career stretching from 1927 to 1956 I made over 120 titles in fourteen seperate sessions. I was recorded every year but one over the ten-year period between 1927 and 1936.
During the late twenties and thirties, I appeared before every recording scout who came to Atlanta with my guitar and a new persona. I recorded as "Blind Sammie" for Columbia, "Georgia Bill" for OKeh, "Red Hot Willie Glaze" for Bluebird, and "Blind Willie" for Vocalion. My best known nickname was Doog or Doogie, though I never used it on my recordings.
1930 as the Depression bit hard in Atlanta, I entered the studio again but I made just two recordings. After an 18 month spell away from the studio, I recorded 'Broke Down Engine Blues' but only 500 copies are pressed.
In 1934 I recorded with Curley Weaver and Buddy Moss in New York. Curley Weaver would continue to accompany me in my travels and would remain among my favorite musicians to record with.
I was also close friends with Blind Willie Johnson, with whom I shared a very precice and tuneful slide technique with a heavy, fast vibrato.
In 1934 I married Ruthy Kate Williams, a student I'd heard singing at a high school ceremony in Augusta. On occasion she sang spirituals with me and danced onstage while I played matinees at the 81 Theater, sometimes with Weaver sitting in.
Folklorist John Lomax recorded me for the Library of Congress Archieve of (American) Folk Songs in 1940.
I returned to commercial recording in 1949 after an absence of 13 years.
Record shop owner Ed Rhodes recorded an hour of my playing a variety of styles in 1956. This was to be my last recording session.
I died in Milledgeville State Hospital, Georgia in 1959, and my wish to be buried with my 12-string guitar was not honored. Among Curley Weaver, the Hicks brothers, Peg Leg Howell, and other prewar contemporaries, I created stacks of terrific blues recordings, precious little of their influence resounds in modern music"
Blind Willie McTell - Monologues On- The History Of The Blues; Life As Maker Of Records; On Himself
(Library of Congress Recordings)
Blind Willie McTell - Monologue on Old Songs
(Library of Congress Recordings)

My Interests

Music:

Blind Lemon Jefferson, Georgia Tom Dorsey (Reverend Thomas Dorsey), Buddy Moss, Curley Weaver, Savannah "Dip" Shepard (Weaver's mother), Ruby Glaze, Blind Willie Johnson, Piano Red, Barbecue Bob (Robert Hicks), Laughing Charley Lincoln (Charley Hicks), Johnnie Guthrie, Blind Blake and the Hokum Boys, Peg Leg Howell, Eddie Mapp, The Georgia Cotton Pickers, Mississippi Sheiks, Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell, Fred McMullen, Jimmie Rodgers, Clarence Moore, Bumble Bee Slim, Tampa Red, Pinetop Perkins, southern blues, ragtime, gospel, hillbilly, my father Edward McTear and my mother Minnie Watkins

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Blind Willie McTell & Curley Weaver - "Wee Midnight Hours"

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Blind Willie McTell - "Travelin' Blues"

Blind Willie McTell - "Travelin' Blues/Talkin' to myself" (US 78 Columbia 14484)