Pregled posta

The fifth volume of the “Blues At Home” Collection, this CD features a totally unknown musician from Henning, Tennessee, a very prolific area from which several outstanding blues artists came – Noah Lewis, Charlie Pickett, and John Henry Barbee, for example. Cary Tate was born in Henning, Tennessee, in 1905, and was discovered in the summer of 1976 in Humboldt, Tennessee, through the help of Hammie Nixon, and two sessions were recorded at Tate’s home there. Less than one year later, Tate was murdered under obscure circumstances in Humboldt, and the recordings presented on this CD remain his last testament. Rooted in the traditional blues of South Western Tennessee, Cary Tate was an accomplished vocalist whose intensity was coupled with skill on the guitar in a range of styles.
The CD also includes six tracks by Alonzo Burks (a.k.a. Lonzo Burkes, born 1919 in Madison, Mississippi), another unknown artist discovered in Flora, Mississippi, in the summer of 1978, through referral of William “Do Boy” Diamond’s nephew Eugene. Alonzo Burks has spent most of his life in the Flora area working as a farmer and tractor driver for a local landowner named W.E. Wesby. When I met him he was holding an electric guitar, playing in local juke joints with a small combo, earning the nickname of “Boogie Children.” Burks repertoire presented here includes well-known Post-War blues recordings conveniently readapted by him, plus a traditional gospel title. All tracks have been fully digitally remastered in 2013 from the original tapes. ~Giambattista Marcucci