Blind Blake

I'm the goddamn King of Ragtime Guitar. I'm blind, and as was the parlance of the time, I incorporated that disability into my identity. I was born into a cotton picking family, but I couldn't tell a cotton plant from a slave driver. I started playing guitar because I couldn't earn any other kind of living. Sometimes I sound like I'm playing Flamenco, but wherefrom that came, I couldn't say. Some people will say, after I'm dead, that no one ever solicited a more original sound from his instrument.