Frankie is one of the best vocal & guitar pieces ever, probably the best guitar recording ever. Rumor (i.e. Spottswood) has it that when this piece was played for Segovia, he couldn't believe there were not two guitars at work - John Fahey, on John Hurt
Bruce Conforth just shared this photo of Son with girlfriend in 1929. WOW! It's in the "American Epic" book, apparently. John Tefteller has ANOTHER Son photo from the 1920s-30s, we'll see when or if that comes out.
John Tefteller says "the photo was discovered by Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty and is published in the soon to be released companion book to the AMERICAN EPIC series which starts on PBS and BBC worldwide one week from today (Tuesday, May 16th)."
That image was incredibly exciting to see! Thank you so much for sharing, If I recall correctly, Evie's daughter said that the rediscovery photo was the earliest one she had when asked about it in the early 2000s.
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Confident that I'm probably almost definitely the youngest record label owner in my street
My copy of the American Epic book just arrived yesterday and for anyone curious the photo noted above is the only photo of Son in the book, but it's given a full page and looks great. That said the book is well worth the price and includes some other photos of country blues musicians though I'm not well versed enough to know if anything else is previously unpublished. There's a colorized version of the one known Charley Patton photo that makes me wonder if it was colorized for the book or if the original photo was colorized but no one had printed it in color yet. There's also a couple photos of the Memphis Jug Band performing that are really great and that I hadn't seen before (but, I suspect, have been previously published). For old time and cajun fans there's a trove of wonderful photos including a ton of the Breaux family with an amazing photo of a young Cleoma Breaux.
I didn't read much of the book yet but the content seems largely to be transcripts from interviews (both conducted in the past and more recently) and promises to reveal some great insights into living life and making music in the '20s and '30s. I did start reading a bit of the interview with Charlie Musselwhite about hanging out with Will Shade and there's lots of great stuff there.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2017, 12:58:06 PM by TenBrook »
A lot of stuff that's been previously published was in media which is now out of print and hard to find; Blues Unlimited issues from 1968 and so on.
Also, the magazines in which these types of photos were typically done on newsprint or some other low-grade paper. So any reprint from the actual photos in a glossy book would be a huge improvement.