Honoring Blues Legends
Miss Lavelle White - Blues Legend and headliner
for the 4th Annual Blues Women - Blues History Event March 19th
Texas-based vocalist and songwriter "Miss" Lavelle White has a significant discography of singles, most dating back to the 1950s and '60s, but she only released her first full length album, Miss Lavelle, on the Austin, TX-based Antone's label in 1994. To say the album has been a long time coming would be the understatement of the year, for White's talents as a songwriter and singer were well-known in 1950s Houston, where she recorded several singles for the Duke/Peacock labels. In the late '50s, her labelmates included Bobby "Blue" Bland, B.B. King, and Junior Parker. Miss Lavelle was White's first recording of any kind, in fact, in 30 years. The fact that it's a gorgeous album helped White play some large blues festivals across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, but for a number of years when she had no record deal, White continued to entertain club crowds with her singing in Chicago, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida.White's first big break as a vocalist came about with something she wrote for herself, "If I Could Be with You," and a procession of other singles followed for the Duke/Peacock label, including "Just Look at You Fool," "Stop These Teardrops," and "The Tide of Love." Unlike many other blues singers, White didn't get started recording until she was 25, thanks to fellow Houstonian Johnny "Clyde" Copeland, who brought White to Duke/Peacock owner Don Robey's attention.
White began writing poems and songs when she was 12, she said in a 1994 interview. "Hardships in life made me start to write," she explained, "and the first record I cut was with a gospel group,'Precious Lord, Lead Me On.'" When she was 16, White moved to Houston and fell into the city's burgeoning blues club scene with Clarence Hollimon, who now records with his wife Carol Fran for the Rounder label.
Today, long after she got her humble start in the blues clubs in Houston, White sings as well as she ever did, and though she's had time off from the road over the years, she's never stopped singing or writing songs. She released her first album, Miss Lavelle, in 1994. It was followed three years later by It Haven't Been Easy.
Article Written by Richard Skelly; found on the website: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/lavelle-white-mn0000784505/biography
White began writing poems and songs when she was 12, she said in a 1994 interview. "Hardships in life made me start to write," she explained, "and the first record I cut was with a gospel group,'Precious Lord, Lead Me On.'" When she was 16, White moved to Houston and fell into the city's burgeoning blues club scene with Clarence Hollimon, who now records with his wife Carol Fran for the Rounder label.
Today, long after she got her humble start in the blues clubs in Houston, White sings as well as she ever did, and though she's had time off from the road over the years, she's never stopped singing or writing songs. She released her first album, Miss Lavelle, in 1994. It was followed three years later by It Haven't Been Easy.
Article Written by Richard Skelly; found on the website: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/lavelle-white-mn0000784505/biography
You've seen him on the Houston Blues Society logo...but who was Lightnin' Hopkins?
Sam (Lightnin') Hopkins, 69;
Blues Signer and Guitarist
Story by WOLFGANG SAXON, from the New York Times Obituaries page posted here, published February 1, 1982
Photo by MATTHEW KEEVER, by Houston Press posted here, published November 15, 2010
Sam (Lightnin') Hopkins, one of the great country blues singers and perhaps the greatest single influence on rock guitar players, died Saturday in Houston, where he made his home. He would have been 70 years old next month.
A contemporary of Muddy Waters, B.B. King and John Lee Hooker, he was one of the last of the original blues artists. Mr. Hopkins began to sing the blues as a child in his native Texas. He started to sing professionally in the 1930's, gaining recognition beyond his home state with an intense style that he used to phrase his songs of suffering and death. In his dark and supple voice, he would evoke his past as a field hand and rambler to the accompaniment of highly imaginative guitar work.
His instrument often became a second voice to discourse with, or to end his vocal phrases. It also enhanced his reputation for flair, wit and improvisational skill. A Spontaneous Style On his guitar, Mr. Hopkins would alternate ominous single-note runs on the high strings with a hard-driving bass in irregular rhythms that matched his spontaneous, conversational lyrics.
His recordings and fame had preceded the lean, lanky minstrel when he first ventured North in 1960 for a concert in Carnegie Hall and appearances at the Village Gate.
The Carnegie Hall concert was a benefit hootenanny that also featured the young Joan Baez. Mr. Hopkins performed his frequently bitter and sardonic, introspective and autobiographical songs, and also swapped verses with Pete Seeger and Bill McAdoo, a young folk singer from Detroit.
But his art was best suited for the more intimate surroundings of a club like the Village Gate, where he sang of unfulfilled love and unappreciated devotion. ''The blues form may seem simple and limiting,'' reported Robert Shelton in his review in The New York Times, ''but at the hands of a master his sentiments burgeoned into a subtle exploration of moods.''
Mr. Hopkins returned to the Village Gate in 1962 for a joint appearance with Sabicas, the Spanish flamenco guitarist. Playing out his moody, subjectively ruminating songs on a $65 guitar, he added an unusually light-hearted number, ''Happy Blues for John Glenn,'' after having watched the television reports on the astronaut's orbital flight around the world. Blues Accordin' to Lightin'.
By that time, M r. Hopkins, a regular on Houston's Dowling Street, had recorded more than 200 singles and 10 albums in 42 years of singing.
He appeared in 1970 in a short film, ''Blues Accordin' to Lightin' Hopkins,'' a tribute to his musicianship, a study of his brand of music, as well as a celebration of his way of life.
Mr. Hopkins was at Carnegie Hall again, in 1979, for a four-hour Boogie 'n Blues concert and appeared for the last time in New York the following year for a three-night stand at Tramps on East 15th Street.
Sam Hopkins was born March 15, 1912, in Centerville, Tex., a small cotton town, north of Houston, surrounded by red-clay country. At 8, he made his first guitar and had his brother teach him basic guitar blues, enough to get him started as a musician.
He left school about that time to travel in Texas, sometimes as a hobo and occasionally working as a farmhand; he also did other odd jobs and played the guitar at county fairs and picnics. During those ramblings, he encountered Blind Lemon Alexander, the most popular Texas blues singer at the time, and his cousin, Texas Alexander, who sang but didn't play the guitar; he took young Sam on as accompanist.
It became a lasting association. Mr. Hopkins and Texas Alexander, a singer with a voice like barbed wire, worked theaters and both could still be heard together on Houston street corners and city buses in the early 1950's. 'Rediscovered' in 50's Mr. Hopkins had returned to Houston in 1945 after years of wandering around the South. Ten years later - he had become well known throughout Texas by then - the country blues were at a low as popular music and he fell into obscurity.
But a musicologist, Sam Charters, ''rediscovered'' him in the late 1950's and introduced him to a new generation of blues fans, this time across the country.
''The last of the blues is almost gone,'' Mr. Hopkins noted just a few years ago when he had his national fame well in place, ''and the ones who doin' it now got to either get a record or sit 'round me and learn my stuff, 'cause that all that they can go by.''
Blues Signer and Guitarist
Story by WOLFGANG SAXON, from the New York Times Obituaries page posted here, published February 1, 1982
Photo by MATTHEW KEEVER, by Houston Press posted here, published November 15, 2010
Sam (Lightnin') Hopkins, one of the great country blues singers and perhaps the greatest single influence on rock guitar players, died Saturday in Houston, where he made his home. He would have been 70 years old next month.
A contemporary of Muddy Waters, B.B. King and John Lee Hooker, he was one of the last of the original blues artists. Mr. Hopkins began to sing the blues as a child in his native Texas. He started to sing professionally in the 1930's, gaining recognition beyond his home state with an intense style that he used to phrase his songs of suffering and death. In his dark and supple voice, he would evoke his past as a field hand and rambler to the accompaniment of highly imaginative guitar work.
His instrument often became a second voice to discourse with, or to end his vocal phrases. It also enhanced his reputation for flair, wit and improvisational skill. A Spontaneous Style On his guitar, Mr. Hopkins would alternate ominous single-note runs on the high strings with a hard-driving bass in irregular rhythms that matched his spontaneous, conversational lyrics.
His recordings and fame had preceded the lean, lanky minstrel when he first ventured North in 1960 for a concert in Carnegie Hall and appearances at the Village Gate.
The Carnegie Hall concert was a benefit hootenanny that also featured the young Joan Baez. Mr. Hopkins performed his frequently bitter and sardonic, introspective and autobiographical songs, and also swapped verses with Pete Seeger and Bill McAdoo, a young folk singer from Detroit.
But his art was best suited for the more intimate surroundings of a club like the Village Gate, where he sang of unfulfilled love and unappreciated devotion. ''The blues form may seem simple and limiting,'' reported Robert Shelton in his review in The New York Times, ''but at the hands of a master his sentiments burgeoned into a subtle exploration of moods.''
Mr. Hopkins returned to the Village Gate in 1962 for a joint appearance with Sabicas, the Spanish flamenco guitarist. Playing out his moody, subjectively ruminating songs on a $65 guitar, he added an unusually light-hearted number, ''Happy Blues for John Glenn,'' after having watched the television reports on the astronaut's orbital flight around the world. Blues Accordin' to Lightin'.
By that time, M r. Hopkins, a regular on Houston's Dowling Street, had recorded more than 200 singles and 10 albums in 42 years of singing.
He appeared in 1970 in a short film, ''Blues Accordin' to Lightin' Hopkins,'' a tribute to his musicianship, a study of his brand of music, as well as a celebration of his way of life.
Mr. Hopkins was at Carnegie Hall again, in 1979, for a four-hour Boogie 'n Blues concert and appeared for the last time in New York the following year for a three-night stand at Tramps on East 15th Street.
Sam Hopkins was born March 15, 1912, in Centerville, Tex., a small cotton town, north of Houston, surrounded by red-clay country. At 8, he made his first guitar and had his brother teach him basic guitar blues, enough to get him started as a musician.
He left school about that time to travel in Texas, sometimes as a hobo and occasionally working as a farmhand; he also did other odd jobs and played the guitar at county fairs and picnics. During those ramblings, he encountered Blind Lemon Alexander, the most popular Texas blues singer at the time, and his cousin, Texas Alexander, who sang but didn't play the guitar; he took young Sam on as accompanist.
It became a lasting association. Mr. Hopkins and Texas Alexander, a singer with a voice like barbed wire, worked theaters and both could still be heard together on Houston street corners and city buses in the early 1950's. 'Rediscovered' in 50's Mr. Hopkins had returned to Houston in 1945 after years of wandering around the South. Ten years later - he had become well known throughout Texas by then - the country blues were at a low as popular music and he fell into obscurity.
But a musicologist, Sam Charters, ''rediscovered'' him in the late 1950's and introduced him to a new generation of blues fans, this time across the country.
''The last of the blues is almost gone,'' Mr. Hopkins noted just a few years ago when he had his national fame well in place, ''and the ones who doin' it now got to either get a record or sit 'round me and learn my stuff, 'cause that all that they can go by.''
There are all kinds of Legends...musicians, yes, and also where they played! Read below about the legendary Eldorado Ballroom!
Eldorado Ballroom: A Concise History
By Dr. Roger Wood Monday, March 7, 2011 at 5 p.m.
By Chris Gray
(Taken from the Houston Press article Monday March 7, 2011. Find it here)
Rocks Off was pleased as punch to report last week that, thanks to the efforts of the Texas Blues Project's R. Eric Davis and Project Row Houses, which has owned the historic Third Ward venue since 1999, the Eldorado Ballroom will receive its own Texas Historical Marker plaque later this year.
Davis, the man who headed up the campaign for the Lightnin' Hopkins marker that now rests a few blocks from the Eldorado, paid for the application fee to the Texas Historical Commission - more soon on his brand-new soon-to-be nonprofit, which intends to raise money to purchase or restore blues musicians' gravestones as well as for a walk of fame-style Blues Trail in a high-traffic location TBD - and the Project Row board of directors raised all the funds to pay for the marker itself.
Rocks Off spoke with Project Row director Linda Shearer, who told us that beyond being very excited about the news, she didn't have that much to tell us yet. Figuring out how and when the Eldorado's marker will be dedicated - and even what it's going to say - is still in the "beginning stages," she said, although they are hoping to have something as soon as late April or early May.
As you're about to read, the Eldorado - alive, well, and still hosting concerts and other events - is such a historic venue it takes a real historian to tell the tale. Rocks Off reached out to our designated local music scholar, Dr. Roger Wood, for his assistance. His history of the Eldorado is after the jump. Thanks, Doc.
The Eldorado Building opened in 1939 with various small businesses as tenants on the ground level and the famous Eldorado Ballroom occupying the entire (and spacious) second floor.
The nightclub operated there from 1939 till the early 1970s. In its prime, it reigned as one of the finest showcases in the South for performance of, and dancing to, black secular music - mostly blues, jazz, and R&B, but also pop and even some zydeco (e.g., Clifton Chenier is known to have performed there in the 1950s).
This large building occupies a high-profile corner in Third Ward: the intersection of Elgin and Dowling, right across the street from Emancipation Park, the first city park in Houston that was open to - and in fact created by - African-Americans, dating back to the days of Rev. Jack Yates.
The owners of the Eldorado Building were a remarkably successful African-American couple, Clarence Dupree and his wife Anna Dupree (1891-1977). They had married in 1914, but even before then, Mrs. Dupree had established herself as an sharp entrepreneur via her ownership of beauty parlor.
As a team, the Duprees prospered, even during the Great Depression, and they created the Eldorado Building primarily as an investment. But they also specifically established the upscale Eldorado Ballroom to serve as what Ms. Dupree reportedly defined as a "class" venue for Houston blacks, during an era when segregation severely limited the options of well-to-do African-Americans seeking to enjoy a night out for entertainment purposes.
Like the more famous Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, the Eldorado billed itself as "The Home of Happy Feet" in homage to the dancing that occurred there.
From 1939 into the early 1960s, the Eldorado Ballroom maintained a large house band - actually more of an orchestra, typically comprising 17 to 18 instruments. Directed by legendary Houston big-band leaders such as Ed Golden, Milton Larkin, I. H. "Ike" Smalley, Arnett Cobb, Pluma Davis, and Conrad Johnson, the house band backed nationally touring stars as well as self-produced floor shows featuring local entertainers (singers, dancers and comedians).
Among the big name acts that are reported to have performed at the Eldorado Ballroom are T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Bill Doggett ("Honky Tonk"), and the original Guitar Slim, Eddie Jones.
The Eldorado Ballroom was a crucial finishing school of sorts for local musicians. Playing in the house band there was a high status achievement, a gig that sometimes led to big breaks and individual fame as a musician. Among the scores of noteworthy alumni of the Eldorado house band are Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Don Wilkerson and Calvin Owens, for instance.
Also, Third Ward-based radio station KCOH often used the venue to stage Saturday afternoon talent shows (broadcast live over the radio) featuring local youth, giving unknown kids the opportunity to perform on the most prestigious stage in the community.
The great vocalist Jewel Brown, for instance, who went on the sing with the Louis Armstrong band for almost five years in the early 1960s, launched her career by winning the talent show there around age 12 or so. The same goes for Johnny "Guitar" Watson, who actually won the contest performing as a pianist, and his good friend Joe "Guitar" Hughes, among others.
In the early 1970s, the Eldorado Ballroom began to decline as a nightclub of choice for Houston blacks due to various factors including desegregation of public venues in the city and the younger generation's preference for more contemporary styles of music than those that the Eldorado, still a bastion of classic big-band blues and jazz, had come to personify. Eventually it closed, though the building survived as home to various businesses.
In the early 21st century, the Eldorado Building was donated to the local nonprofit arts and social-services organization Project Row Houses. It was a gift from Hub Finkelstein, a Jewish man who had grown up in the southern part of Third Ward, home to much of Houston's Jewish community before World War II.
Mr. Finkelstein had amassed a significant personal fortune through the oil business, and he reportedly bought the property as an investment but also for sentimental and historical reasons. You see, as a young man, he had first heard live jazz projecting from the open windows of the famous nightclub and fell in love with that sound.
Decades later he purchased the building and then elected to donate it to Project Row Houses in order to preserve the physical structure that served for him personally, as well as for much of the local black community, as a prominent symbol of the culture that birthed and nurtured that music.
For more information on the Eldorado, see this 2006 article for the Houston Review of Culture & History written by Leigh Tucker.
By Dr. Roger Wood Monday, March 7, 2011 at 5 p.m.
By Chris Gray
(Taken from the Houston Press article Monday March 7, 2011. Find it here)
Rocks Off was pleased as punch to report last week that, thanks to the efforts of the Texas Blues Project's R. Eric Davis and Project Row Houses, which has owned the historic Third Ward venue since 1999, the Eldorado Ballroom will receive its own Texas Historical Marker plaque later this year.
Davis, the man who headed up the campaign for the Lightnin' Hopkins marker that now rests a few blocks from the Eldorado, paid for the application fee to the Texas Historical Commission - more soon on his brand-new soon-to-be nonprofit, which intends to raise money to purchase or restore blues musicians' gravestones as well as for a walk of fame-style Blues Trail in a high-traffic location TBD - and the Project Row board of directors raised all the funds to pay for the marker itself.
Rocks Off spoke with Project Row director Linda Shearer, who told us that beyond being very excited about the news, she didn't have that much to tell us yet. Figuring out how and when the Eldorado's marker will be dedicated - and even what it's going to say - is still in the "beginning stages," she said, although they are hoping to have something as soon as late April or early May.
As you're about to read, the Eldorado - alive, well, and still hosting concerts and other events - is such a historic venue it takes a real historian to tell the tale. Rocks Off reached out to our designated local music scholar, Dr. Roger Wood, for his assistance. His history of the Eldorado is after the jump. Thanks, Doc.
The Eldorado Building opened in 1939 with various small businesses as tenants on the ground level and the famous Eldorado Ballroom occupying the entire (and spacious) second floor.
The nightclub operated there from 1939 till the early 1970s. In its prime, it reigned as one of the finest showcases in the South for performance of, and dancing to, black secular music - mostly blues, jazz, and R&B, but also pop and even some zydeco (e.g., Clifton Chenier is known to have performed there in the 1950s).
This large building occupies a high-profile corner in Third Ward: the intersection of Elgin and Dowling, right across the street from Emancipation Park, the first city park in Houston that was open to - and in fact created by - African-Americans, dating back to the days of Rev. Jack Yates.
The owners of the Eldorado Building were a remarkably successful African-American couple, Clarence Dupree and his wife Anna Dupree (1891-1977). They had married in 1914, but even before then, Mrs. Dupree had established herself as an sharp entrepreneur via her ownership of beauty parlor.
As a team, the Duprees prospered, even during the Great Depression, and they created the Eldorado Building primarily as an investment. But they also specifically established the upscale Eldorado Ballroom to serve as what Ms. Dupree reportedly defined as a "class" venue for Houston blacks, during an era when segregation severely limited the options of well-to-do African-Americans seeking to enjoy a night out for entertainment purposes.
Like the more famous Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, the Eldorado billed itself as "The Home of Happy Feet" in homage to the dancing that occurred there.
From 1939 into the early 1960s, the Eldorado Ballroom maintained a large house band - actually more of an orchestra, typically comprising 17 to 18 instruments. Directed by legendary Houston big-band leaders such as Ed Golden, Milton Larkin, I. H. "Ike" Smalley, Arnett Cobb, Pluma Davis, and Conrad Johnson, the house band backed nationally touring stars as well as self-produced floor shows featuring local entertainers (singers, dancers and comedians).
Among the big name acts that are reported to have performed at the Eldorado Ballroom are T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Bill Doggett ("Honky Tonk"), and the original Guitar Slim, Eddie Jones.
The Eldorado Ballroom was a crucial finishing school of sorts for local musicians. Playing in the house band there was a high status achievement, a gig that sometimes led to big breaks and individual fame as a musician. Among the scores of noteworthy alumni of the Eldorado house band are Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Don Wilkerson and Calvin Owens, for instance.
Also, Third Ward-based radio station KCOH often used the venue to stage Saturday afternoon talent shows (broadcast live over the radio) featuring local youth, giving unknown kids the opportunity to perform on the most prestigious stage in the community.
The great vocalist Jewel Brown, for instance, who went on the sing with the Louis Armstrong band for almost five years in the early 1960s, launched her career by winning the talent show there around age 12 or so. The same goes for Johnny "Guitar" Watson, who actually won the contest performing as a pianist, and his good friend Joe "Guitar" Hughes, among others.
In the early 1970s, the Eldorado Ballroom began to decline as a nightclub of choice for Houston blacks due to various factors including desegregation of public venues in the city and the younger generation's preference for more contemporary styles of music than those that the Eldorado, still a bastion of classic big-band blues and jazz, had come to personify. Eventually it closed, though the building survived as home to various businesses.
In the early 21st century, the Eldorado Building was donated to the local nonprofit arts and social-services organization Project Row Houses. It was a gift from Hub Finkelstein, a Jewish man who had grown up in the southern part of Third Ward, home to much of Houston's Jewish community before World War II.
Mr. Finkelstein had amassed a significant personal fortune through the oil business, and he reportedly bought the property as an investment but also for sentimental and historical reasons. You see, as a young man, he had first heard live jazz projecting from the open windows of the famous nightclub and fell in love with that sound.
Decades later he purchased the building and then elected to donate it to Project Row Houses in order to preserve the physical structure that served for him personally, as well as for much of the local black community, as a prominent symbol of the culture that birthed and nurtured that music.
For more information on the Eldorado, see this 2006 article for the Houston Review of Culture & History written by Leigh Tucker.
The 21st annual Navasota Blues Festival honors the memory of Mance Lipscomb
Who was this Texas Blues legend?...
Mance Lipscomb (1895-1976), guitarist and songster, was born to Charles and Jane Lipscomb on April 9, 1895, in the Brazos bottoms near Navasota, Texas, where he lived most of his life as a tenant farmer. His father was an Alabama slave who acquired the surname Lipscomb when he was sold to a Texas family of that name. Lipscomb dropped his given name, Bowdie Glenn, and named himself Mance when a friend, an old man called Emancipation, passed away. Lipscomb and Elnora, his wife of sixty-three years, had one son, Mance Jr., three adopted children, and twenty-four grandchildren.
Lipscomb represented one of the last remnants of the nineteenth-century songster tradition, which predated the development of the blues. Though songsters might incorporate blues into their repertoires, as did Lipscomb, they performed a wide variety of material in diverse styles, much of it common to both black and white traditions in the South, including ballads, rags, dance pieces (breakdowns, waltzes, one and two steps, slow drags, reels, ballin' the jack, the buzzard lope, hop scop, buck and wing, heel and toe polka), and popular, sacred, and secular songs. Lipscomb himself insisted that he was a songster, not a guitarist or "blues singer," since he played "all kinds of music." His eclectic repertoire has been reported to have contained 350 pieces spanning two centuries. (He likewise took exception when he was labeled a "sharecropper" instead of a "farmer.")
Lipscomb was born into a musical family and began playing at an early age. His father was a fiddler, his uncle played the banjo, and his brothers were guitarists. His mother bought him a guitar when he was eleven, and he was soon accompanying his father, and later entertaining alone, at suppers and Saturday night dances. Although he had some contact with such early recording artists as fellow Texans Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie Johnson and early country star James Charles (Jimmie) Rodgers, he did not make recordings until his "discovery" by whites during the folk-song revival of the 1960s.
Between 1905 and 1956 he lived in an atmosphere of exploitation, farming as a tenant for a number of landlords in and around Grimes County, including the notorious Tom Moore, subject of a local topical ballad. He left Moore's employ abruptly and went into hiding after he struck a foreman for abusing his mother and wife. Lipscomb's own rendition of "Tom Moore's Farm" was taped at his first session in 1960 but released anonymously (Arhoolie LP 1017, Texas Blues, Volume 2), presumably to protect the singer. Between 1956 and 1958 Lipscomb lived in Houston, working for a lumber company during the day and playing at night in bars where he vied for audiences with Texas blues great Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, whom Lipscomb had first met in Galveston in 1938. With compensation from an on-the-job accident, he returned to Navasota and was finally able to buy some land and build a house of his own. He was working as foreman of a highway-mowing crew in Grimes County when blues researchers Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records and Mack McCormick of Houston found and recorded him in 1960.
His encounter with Strachwitz and McCormick marked the beginning of over a decade of involvement in the folk-song revival, during which Lipscomb won wide acclaim and emulation from young white audiences and performers for his virtuosity as a guitarist and the breadth of his repertoire. Admirers enjoyed his lengthy reminiscences and eloquent observations regarding music and life, many of which are contained in taped and written materials in the Mance Lipscomb-Glenn Myers Collection in the archives and manuscripts section of the Barker Texas History Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He made numerous recordings and appeared at such festivals as the Berkeley Folk Festival of 1961, where he played before a crowd of more than 40,000. In clubs Lipscomb often shared the bill with young revivalists or rock bands. He was also the subject of a film, A Well-Spent Life (1970), made by Les Blank. Despite his popularity, however, he remained poor. After 1974 declining health confined him to a nursing home and hospitals. He died in Grimes Memorial Hospital, Navasota, on January 30, 1976, and was buried at West Haven Cemetery.
Arhoolie Records (El Cerrito, California) has released seven albums of material by Lipscomb: Mance Lipscomb: Texas Songster and Sharecropper (Arhoolie 1001); Mance Lipscomb Volume 2 (Arhoolie 1023); Mance Lipscomb Volume 3: Texas Songster in a Live Performance (Arhoolie 1026); Mance Lipscomb Volumes 4, 5, and 6 (Arhoolie 1033, 1049, and 1069); and You'll Never Find Another Man Like Mance (Arhoolie 1077). Trouble in Mind was released by Reprise (R-2012). Individual pieces are included in other anthologies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Austin American-Statesman, February 1, 1976. Lipscomb-Myers Collection, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Mance Lipscomb and A. Glenn Myers, I Say Me for a Parable: The Life and Music of Mance Lipscomb (Washington-on-the-Brazos: Possum Heard Diversions, 1981). Mance Lipscomb and A. Glenn Myers, Out of the Bottoms and into the Big City (Red Rock, Texas: Possum Heard Diversions, 1979). A. Glenn Myers, Mance and His Music: Mance Lipscomb Speaks for Himself (Washington-on-the-Brazos: Possum Heard Diversions, 1976). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.
John Minton
"LIPSCOMB, MANCE." The Handbook of Texas Online. here
[Accessed Mon Jul 31 16:42:17 2000 ].
Credit to the following internet site for this information: http://www.famoustexans.com/Mance_Lipscomb.htm
Lipscomb represented one of the last remnants of the nineteenth-century songster tradition, which predated the development of the blues. Though songsters might incorporate blues into their repertoires, as did Lipscomb, they performed a wide variety of material in diverse styles, much of it common to both black and white traditions in the South, including ballads, rags, dance pieces (breakdowns, waltzes, one and two steps, slow drags, reels, ballin' the jack, the buzzard lope, hop scop, buck and wing, heel and toe polka), and popular, sacred, and secular songs. Lipscomb himself insisted that he was a songster, not a guitarist or "blues singer," since he played "all kinds of music." His eclectic repertoire has been reported to have contained 350 pieces spanning two centuries. (He likewise took exception when he was labeled a "sharecropper" instead of a "farmer.")
Lipscomb was born into a musical family and began playing at an early age. His father was a fiddler, his uncle played the banjo, and his brothers were guitarists. His mother bought him a guitar when he was eleven, and he was soon accompanying his father, and later entertaining alone, at suppers and Saturday night dances. Although he had some contact with such early recording artists as fellow Texans Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie Johnson and early country star James Charles (Jimmie) Rodgers, he did not make recordings until his "discovery" by whites during the folk-song revival of the 1960s.
Between 1905 and 1956 he lived in an atmosphere of exploitation, farming as a tenant for a number of landlords in and around Grimes County, including the notorious Tom Moore, subject of a local topical ballad. He left Moore's employ abruptly and went into hiding after he struck a foreman for abusing his mother and wife. Lipscomb's own rendition of "Tom Moore's Farm" was taped at his first session in 1960 but released anonymously (Arhoolie LP 1017, Texas Blues, Volume 2), presumably to protect the singer. Between 1956 and 1958 Lipscomb lived in Houston, working for a lumber company during the day and playing at night in bars where he vied for audiences with Texas blues great Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, whom Lipscomb had first met in Galveston in 1938. With compensation from an on-the-job accident, he returned to Navasota and was finally able to buy some land and build a house of his own. He was working as foreman of a highway-mowing crew in Grimes County when blues researchers Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records and Mack McCormick of Houston found and recorded him in 1960.
His encounter with Strachwitz and McCormick marked the beginning of over a decade of involvement in the folk-song revival, during which Lipscomb won wide acclaim and emulation from young white audiences and performers for his virtuosity as a guitarist and the breadth of his repertoire. Admirers enjoyed his lengthy reminiscences and eloquent observations regarding music and life, many of which are contained in taped and written materials in the Mance Lipscomb-Glenn Myers Collection in the archives and manuscripts section of the Barker Texas History Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He made numerous recordings and appeared at such festivals as the Berkeley Folk Festival of 1961, where he played before a crowd of more than 40,000. In clubs Lipscomb often shared the bill with young revivalists or rock bands. He was also the subject of a film, A Well-Spent Life (1970), made by Les Blank. Despite his popularity, however, he remained poor. After 1974 declining health confined him to a nursing home and hospitals. He died in Grimes Memorial Hospital, Navasota, on January 30, 1976, and was buried at West Haven Cemetery.
Arhoolie Records (El Cerrito, California) has released seven albums of material by Lipscomb: Mance Lipscomb: Texas Songster and Sharecropper (Arhoolie 1001); Mance Lipscomb Volume 2 (Arhoolie 1023); Mance Lipscomb Volume 3: Texas Songster in a Live Performance (Arhoolie 1026); Mance Lipscomb Volumes 4, 5, and 6 (Arhoolie 1033, 1049, and 1069); and You'll Never Find Another Man Like Mance (Arhoolie 1077). Trouble in Mind was released by Reprise (R-2012). Individual pieces are included in other anthologies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Austin American-Statesman, February 1, 1976. Lipscomb-Myers Collection, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Mance Lipscomb and A. Glenn Myers, I Say Me for a Parable: The Life and Music of Mance Lipscomb (Washington-on-the-Brazos: Possum Heard Diversions, 1981). Mance Lipscomb and A. Glenn Myers, Out of the Bottoms and into the Big City (Red Rock, Texas: Possum Heard Diversions, 1979). A. Glenn Myers, Mance and His Music: Mance Lipscomb Speaks for Himself (Washington-on-the-Brazos: Possum Heard Diversions, 1976). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.
John Minton
"LIPSCOMB, MANCE." The Handbook of Texas Online. here
[Accessed Mon Jul 31 16:42:17 2000 ].
Credit to the following internet site for this information: http://www.famoustexans.com/Mance_Lipscomb.htm