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Country Blues

Portland, Oregon, to Antwerp

Derroll Adams

Derroll Adams was born Derroll Lewis Thompson in Portland, Oregon, in 1925. He joined the army at sixteen after Pearl Harbor and was sent home once they found out his age. In the 1950s he busked his way along the West Coast, met Ramblin' Jack Elliott in Topanga Canyon, and crossed to England with him. Elliott went home, and Adams stayed in Europe for the rest of his life, settling in Belgium. He took the young Donovan under his wing. His long-necked banjo carried solo records from 1967 into the 1990s, and in 1978 he recorded a double album in Germany with Hannes Wader, Wizz Jones, Alex Campbell and Finbar Furey. He died in Antwerp in 2000, and a tribute album followed in 2002.

A mobile home that became a stage

Abner Jay

For years Abner Jay toured the South in a converted mobile home that opened out into a stage. He played a six-string banjo, guitar, harmonica, a drum kit and bones made from bleached chicken and cow bones, all at once. Before that he had sung with the Sunlight Four jubilee quartet, worked the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, booked shows for Little Richard and James Brown, and even tried Broadway in the early 1960s. From 1974 he played colleges and the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center in White Springs, Florida, and later held a residency at a restaurant in Stone Mountain, Georgia. He sold eight albums of his own on Brandie Records. Mississippi Records in Portland began reissuing him in 2009, and Anthony Braxton called him an American master.

Dunn, North Carolina, Shawnee roots

Link Wray

Link Wray's mother was of Shawnee descent, and he remembered the family having to hide from the Ku Klux Klan. He grew up partly in Portsmouth, Virginia, playing clubs with his brothers Ray and Doug, who drove cabs by day. Serving in the army during the Korean War, he caught tuberculosis, spent a year in hospital and lost a lung, and doctors told him he would never sing again. Washington TV host Milt Grant became the band's unofficial manager, and Wray's distorted guitar, which he got by poking holes in his amp speaker with a pencil, made him a name on Cadence, Epic and Swan. In the 1970s he made albums for Polydor and Virgin. Pete Townshend said he would never have picked up a guitar without him, and in 2023 Wray entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Mannford, Oklahoma, to Stockholm

Lee Hazlewood

Lee Hazlewood was born in Mannford, Oklahoma, in 1929, served in the Korean War and worked as a DJ in Coolidge, Arizona, and then in Phoenix. From 1958 he produced and co-wrote Duane Eddy's twangy instrumentals, and in the mid-1960s he wrote and produced for Nancy Sinatra. In 1967 he started his own label, LHI, which signed Gram Parsons' International Submarine Band. In 1970 he made a TV special in Sweden with Torbjörn Axelman, and after LHI folded in 1971 he moved to Stockholm and spent about ten years there making records and films. His own albums mixed baritone country, orchestras and dry jokes. Light in the Attic has been reissuing them since 2012. He made a last album in 2006 and died in Nevada in 2007.

Legba Records, Memphis

Reigning Sound

Before Reigning Sound, Greg Cartwright ran Legba Records, a small shop in the Cooper-Young part of Memphis that doubled as a makeshift studio for the band's third album. He later sold it to Eric Friedl, and it became a Goner Records store. The first line-up had Jeremy Scott on bass, Greg Roberson on drums and Alex Greene on keyboards. In Asheville the band became David Wayne Gay, Lance Wille and Dave Amels. A rarities set and a live album recorded at Maxwell's both came out in 2005. The band signed to Merge in 2012 and recorded its next album at Daptone's studio in Brooklyn with members of the soul band the Jay Vons. Cartwright has also produced the Ettes, the Horrors and Andre Williams, and played guitar in the Detroit Cobras.

Cabbagetown, Atlanta, 1990s

Smoke

Smoke came out of Cabbagetown, an old mill district of Atlanta, as the Opal Foxx Quartet was winding down. Benjamin, born Robert Dickerson, sang and recited in a cracked, unhurried voice. Around him were Bill Taft on cornet and banjo, Brian Halloran on cello and Todd Butler on guitar, later joined by Coleman Lewis on guitar and Tim Campion and then Will Fratesi on drums. Their two albums, Heaven on a Popsicle Stick in 1994 and Another Reason to Fast in 1995, came out on the local Long Play label. Patti Smith, who had first inspired Benjamin to make music, came to see them in New York, and in December 1997 they opened for her in Atlanta. Benjamin died in January 1999. Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen's film about him came out in 2000.

Teacher of the Village guitarists

Dave Van Ronk

Dave Van Ronk played the Gaslight and Folk City for years and taught guitar to a long line of younger players, among them Christine Lavin, David Massengill, Elijah Wald and Terre and Suzzy Roche. He arranged ragtime and blues pieces for fingerpicked guitar in a way that a lot of the Village learned from. He recorded for Folkways, Prestige, Verve, Mercury, Polydor, Philo and others, from 1959 until his last album in 2001. He was a man of the left, active in Trotskyist groups until the Socialist Workers Party expelled him in 1964, and he was one of the people arrested at the Stonewall Inn in June 1969. He was nominated twice for the Grammy for best traditional folk album. ASCAP gave him a lifetime award in 1997, and in 2004 part of Sheridan Square was renamed Dave Van Ronk Street.

Enid, Oklahoma, twelve strings

Karen Dalton

Karen Dalton was born Jean Karen Cariker in Bonham, Texas, in 1937 and grew up in Enid, Oklahoma. In the early 1960s she left Oklahoma for New York with a twelve-string guitar and a long-necked banjo, and played the Village with Fred Neil, Tim Hardin and the Holy Modal Rounders. Bob Dylan, who sometimes backed her on harmonica, wrote that she had a voice like Billie Holiday and played guitar like Jimmy Reed. She named Bessie Smith as her main influence. Her first album came out on Capitol in 1969. In My Own Time followed in 1971, recorded at Bearsville with Harvey Brooks producing. Light in the Attic reissued it in 2006, home tapes from a Colorado cabin surfaced in 2008, and a documentary about her premiered in 2020.

The Collection