Topic: Geechie Wiley

[endpinjack]

I don't know if anyone has cited this here before, but there is a graduate thesis online about
Geechie Wiley.

I doubt it will add much to our knowledge of this singer. A lot of words discussing what we don't know.
But a few useful tidbits. Some great Paramount advertising and catalogues at the end.


Geechie Wiley An Exploration of Enigmatic Virtuosity by AnneMarie ...

[Slack]

Here's a link:

http://repository.asu.edu/attachments/56662/content/Cordeiro_asu_0010N_10725.pdf

[westside ryan]

Thanks! I just downloaded myself a copy!

[Gumbo]

thanks endpinjack, and slack for trumping my google skills

[Randy Meadows]

Info that Don Kent wrote:
<removed>

URL restored, it's on the net.

http://paramountshome.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53:don-kents-liner-notes-to-qmississippi-masters-early-american-blues-classics-1927-35&catid=36:miscellaneous-articles-and-interviews&Itemid=54

Thanks,
slack

[TonyGilroy]

I posted the below in 2010.

There's a guy out there who clearly will know something about his cousin Geechie.





As far as I was aware Geechie Wiley was a biographical blank.

However page 95 of this months Oxford American has an article on a group called Nathan & the Checkmates led by Herbert Wiley.

"Blues was in his blood, though. He was also inspired by his first cousin once removed, the Delta singer Geechie Wiley who recorded the deeply spooky "Last Kind Words Blues" in the early spring of 1930."

Apparently the guy's based in Oxford Mississippi. I'd love to discover what he knows of his cousin. 
   
A bit of subsequent googling revealed the following:-










Talk:Geeshie Wiley
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John, I live in Oxford, Mississippi, and I know someone here named Herbert Wiley who says Geeshie is buried here in Oxford. You should definitely talk to him. He ran a shoe shop here before getting into soul singing with his band, The Checkmates. This could be your "holy grail"!Jbshowah (talk) 14:21, 17 October 2008 (UTC)Justin Showah







Help me Geeshie Wiley Fans!
I have undertaken an impossible research project: Find out something more about Geeshie Wiley. Anything at all would be fantastic, finding her grave would be like a holy grail for me. And yes, I am aware that this is well near impossible. And I also know that original research does not a wikipedia article make.

But I am asking for the help of anyone who understands what it feels like to hear Wiley's songs and be forever haunted by every note. So if you know anything, talk about it here please. If you have advice for me about this research, please share.

The citations for this article are lacking, but there are no good sources that I know of so far for Wiley's life and music. So I would also be very glad to hear from those who have written this article about where they got their information, specifically about Ishman, the recordings being for paramount records, and so on. How, for instance, do we even know she was in a medicine show? And what is the source?

Thanks to all those who worked on this difficult to write article, and please feel free to give me any advice or leads you can. And again, I am very serious about this research, and I will not stop until I run into every last brick wall there is. Thanks again. --John ?Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.254.205.53 

[TallahatchieTrot]

I must sadly tell you that Mr. Wiley in Oxford was interviewed by two friends of mine. He knew little about Geechie except his claim that she was a distant relative and was burred in the Oxford area, which no one can document as far as I have been told.
     Ishman  Bracey told me in the mid 1960s when I asked about Geechie and played him a reissue of her recordings that she was in Jackson for about 2 months, lived with Charlie McCoy  and told Bracey personally that she was "from down there  near Natchez."  She sang about the Mississippi River "being deep and wide" and her man was on the other side,  and Natchez is located on the Mississippi.
 Also a 1930 census shows an ELVIE THOMAS age 20 living in Natchez. Matter of fact she died in that city, and I believer it to be the same Elvie Thomas who recorded with Geechie Wiley. Thomas, however also sang on one of Paramount sides about Hattiesburg, Mississippi which is on Highway 84, some 75 miles to the west of Natchez.  I Did not find the census information myself on Thomas but it was sent to me so I do not know exactly who found it to give them credit. But based on Bracey's information which I first printed in the 1960s, and the circumstantial evidence of Natchez on the Mississippi and a Elvie Thomas listed in  the census as living and dying in Natchez, I believe Bracey's information is accurate.
     No one has ever turned up a real first name for Wiley and therein lies the difficulty in tracking her using the census. I have no doubt that she was sent to Paramount records by Jackson music store owner and talent scout H. C. Speir,for that label-  I wish I could add more but she was not remembered at all when I was briefly in Natchez in 1965 door knocking for records and asking about old bluesmen. Everyone recalled the Natchez fire mainly. gdw

[Randy Meadows]

Name:
A Wiley

Gender:
F (Female)

Residence Year:
1937

Street Address:
899 Nelson

Residence Place:
Memphis, Tennessee

Occupation:
Radio Musician Rl

Spouse:
Avis M Wiley 

Publication Title:
Memphis, Tennessee, City Directory, 1937

FOUND ON Ancestry.com...
Thanks, Randy