Topic: Guitar Shorty (John Henry Fortescue)

[oddenda]

Given his drinking skills, I'm not surprised at cause of death. Still do not know his birth date - will try and put Eric LeBlanc onto that task!

Peter B.

[Lignite]

I was a young English major at UNC Chapel Hill in the early 1970s and I used to see Guitar Shorty every time he played in town, which was pretty frenquently. He used to play often at a small basement club called The Endangered Species and I remember one particular night with a bunch of drunken hippies cheering him after a typically rousing performance when Shorty stumbled off the stage area right into the small mob loudly proclaiming "Guitar Shorty put on a good show for you, didn't he?!!!" Those were some good times. I was also there at the Blues Festival on campus where Shorty stopped his whole set to walk out into the audience to grab his wife Lena's wig off her head and to march back on stage and preceed to do an Elvis imitation. What a hoot!!
Danny McClean is a good friend of mine (I just talked to him today) and recorded what was released on the Flyright LP on the porch of Shorty's shack on a small cassette player. He does not have any more recordings of Shorty and says he gave everything he had to Bruce Bastin back in the early 70s. He says that Shorty's life was not a glamorous one. He would work in the fields all week and pick up enough booze on Friday in Elm City to stay drunk all weekend. Those were different times and while we miss characters like Guitar Shorty and his wonderfully spontaneous blues music, there are much fewer shacks and black tenent farmers in eastern North Carolina anymore.