Condensed Epilog
Nathan Beauregard, born blind in 1863. Already in his mid-sixties at the
time of the race
recording era of the 20's, he had witnessed younger men who he could outplay
achieve
successful recording careers. He had, in fact witnessed it all. He stopped
learning new material
at the end of the 30's, and his latest most up to date tunes were proof of it.
Both tunes had become big around 1940, just before the onset of the Petrillo
ban and WW II
ended much of the country blues recording which had been possible without
union interference
until then. Highway 61 in a sort of Tommy McClennan type of style but more
long and lonesome;
older, more authoritative, and Memphis Minnie's Bumble Bee. His earliest
tunes were pre-blues
country songs and dance tunes like "Pretty Bunch of Daisies," or "Spoonful,"
which he indeed
played using the same melody that John Hurt used. He asked me whatever had
happened to
Uncle Dave, whose songs he'd enjoyed in earlier days when the music played
by black and
white country cultures had been similar. Nathan had small hands, delicate,
with strong nails, and
he could get a very clean and accurate picking sound when he wanted to,
although he had
naturally slowed a bit by the time we met when he was 103. His voice was
high and lonesome,
the kind you once heard coming from the front porch and out on across the
fields, in an earlier
century. "I got 19 women, and I wants one more," he sang. I figured he was
entitled.
excerpted from Confessions of a Psychedelic Carpetbagger
by Bill Barth © 1995
