Thank the Blues Gods for Preston Alvin Stone (1927-1993)

A.G. LETTER From Mississippi 

Dear fellow blues travelers, 

The author in 2002
From the Greenwood Commonwealth

I'm writing from out in the north Mississippi countryside, where my life has become complete! I've just found and played the 1932 National Style N single-cone resonator guitar originally owned by my favorite musician: 1930s bluesman Bo Carter, who died in 1964, leaving nothing but his recordings and this instrument. My Holy Grail stands caseless, blithely leaning against a living-room wall in the home of Bill Gandy, a retired railroad engineer and amateur guitarist. Bill, his wife, Beverly, and their teenagers, dogs, and pet pig live here, a few miles out from Potts Camp (population 500). 

For years, I have been fascinated by Bo Carter, the remarkable guitarist and saucy lyricist responsible for such classics as "All Around Man," "I Want You to Know," and "Your Biscuits Are Big Enough for Me." I have spent countless hours listening to his 118 recorded sides and then learning and performing them. His guitar parts are perhaps the most challenging of any country blues artist's, with varied keys and tunings (including the unusual D G D G B E), strange chord shapes, and sparkling runs.

The author (right) in the band Jackolope
Arizona Republic Feb 14, 1987

Five years ago, my fascination progressed to downright obsession. I moved from Arizona to Mississippi to get more in touch with my inner Bo Carter. I enrolled in the master's program in southern studies at the University of Mississippi and did my thesis on Carter. I visited his unmarked grave in a weed-clogged cemetery in Nitta Yuma. I traveled to towns where he hung out. I met a few people who had heard him play. One was a man who marveled about how, totally blind late in life, Bo could tell the difference between a $5 bill and a $10 bill when you handed him a tip. Another was a well-off Vicksburg woman whose mother had employed Bo's wife as a maid. When Bo stopped by to pick up his wife, the woman re-called, he'd break out his guitar and entertain the children with smutty that National guitar songs. Wandering Bo's turf, performing his music, and picking up tidbits of information about him here and there—that's as close to him as I ever expected to get. 

Until I picked up that National guitar.

The Grave of Preston Alvin Stone

Bethel Cemetery, Desoto County , MS

Bo liked it, no doubt, for its flashy look as well as for its loud and distinctive sound and its durability. He still had it in 1960, when British blues researcher Paul Oliver happened to meet him in Memphis and interviewed and photographed him for the book Conversation with the Blues. 

Probably shortly before Carter's death, the guitar passed into the hands of one [Preston Alvin] P.A. Stone [Dec 19, 1927 – Feb 9, 1993 buried in Bethel Cemetery, Desoto County, MS], who ran a trading post from his house in Hernando, Mississippi. Stone was a guitarist himself, a country picker who sometimes played lap-style slide. He liked resonator guitars, but he preferred them with wooden bodies and square necks. This metal-bodied, round-necked guitar was not something he cared to play. so he stuffed it into the crawl-space basement of the building that was his home and store. There it lay hibernating, literally underground, for more than ten years.

Bo Carter in 1960
Photo by Paul Oliver

The guitar was thick with green mold and other corrosion when Stone pulled it out in the late 1970s to show it to Gandy, who was looking for a resonator guitar on which to play slide. Gandy remembers Stone telling him that the guitar had belonged to "an old blues player from Mississippi who could play anything." According to Gandy, he said, "He could play rags, he could play blues, he could play anything, whatever the gig was." Gandy had expected to spend a couple hundred dollars on an old resonator guitar. So when Stone asked for $50, Gandy gave him a puzzled look. Stone apparently misread the look and said, "How about $40?" Gandy bought it, took it home, and used a power sander to remove the crud. He took it to a guitar technician in Memphis to have the neck straightened out so he could play it. And play it he did. "I carried it on a caboose for years," Gandy says. "It sounded so good in there." A native Mississippian, Gandy plays in various styles, including a bit of the blues. He is interested in the music's history and lore. He met Gayle Dean Wardlow, a blues researcher and collector of old 78s and guitars, and told him the National was supposed to have belonged to an old bluesman. Wardlow figured out whose it was and showed Gandy the Oliver photographs. It was uncanny how the wear marks matched. It seemed that Gandy had the guitar of a great bluesman. "It ruined it, in a way," Gandy says. "I was afraid to carry it out. Before that, I had a lot of fun with it on the railroad."

Bo Carter
(circa 1937)

When I pick up the guitar and play Bo Carter songs on it, Gandy and his wife grin with pleasure. They are great songs, yes. But they sound especially great on this guitar. Watching my hands, Gandy notes that the wear spots in the fingerboard match the places where I play the chords Carter used. This is definitely a guitar that was played a lot, by someone who held it the same way Bo Carter did. Its main wear patterns are strikingly like those in the photo. It has a few small marks that don't match the guitar in the picture. But this guitar went through a lot since the picture was taken. Underground storage, sanding, and re-pair may have caused or removed some marks. The guitar also has two provocative dents on the seam—perhaps formed when Bo used the guitar in self-defense, which was another reason the blues players favored metal guitars. Because of the angle of the Oliver photos, those dents, if they're there, are not visible. The guitar handles very well, and Carter's licks fall easily onto its narrow neck. Its sound is punchy and loud, yet warm with age. It sounds like Bo Carter! It's got that plonk to it. I linger for hours at the Gandys' house, listening to records, eating fresh-caught catfish and homemade hush puppies, and playing that guitar. Each time I start to get up to leave, I think of another song I want to try on it. Of course I ask about buying the guitar. But it's not for sale. Gandy is proud of it, of its connection to a great early bluesman, of the strange way he acquired it. And he has been playing it for years. I ask him to talk to me first if he ever decides to sell it. It's a darn nice guitar, whether it was Bo Carter's or not. I head home, listening to Bo playing that guitar on his old recordings on my car stereo. At home, I toast Paul Oliver for photographing Bo Carter's guitar and thus allowing us to identify it now, Bill Gandy for restoring it and giving it a good home, and Bo Carter for making it sing through the ages. Then I pick up my own guitar and play those old licks. So long, baby, so long, 

Written by Steve Cheseborough

For Acoustic Guitar magazine 2002

$10,000 to Save Mt. Zion Church Clarksdale Press Register - 1990

$10,000 to Save Mt. Zion Church

Clarksdale Press Register - 1990

On his recent trip to Clarksdale, vintage guitar dealer Raymond "Skip" Henderson of New Brunswick, N.J., displays a check for $10,000 donated by Columbia Records to the Robert Johnson Memorial Fund. Henderson organized the non-profit corporation with Clarksdale attorney Walker Sims to preserve Mt. Zion M. B. Church near Morgan City where the blues giant Robert Johnson may have been buried. The recent remastering of Robert Johnson's records by Columbia and their skyrocketing-success on Billboard charts has produced an in-tense interest in Johnson's life and death. A strong supporter and fundraiser for Clarksdale/s Delta Blues Museum, Henderson is concerned about preserving blues landmarks in Mississippi. 

Chimney Sweep & Fireman Gets an Early Education of The Blues

Fireman Gets an Early Education of The Blues

By Larry Biz - Clarksdale Press Register - 2005 

Rack 'em up. That phrase is associated with someone familiar with life around a pool hall. Robert Birdsong says he learned a lot about the more important aspects about Clarksdale from being a "rack boy" in his youth. "I was a 'rack boy' at a pool hall and got paid a nickel every time I racked them up," informed Birdsong, a captain with the Clarksdale Fire Department, who also operates a tour guide service up and down the Delta which is more of a hobby than a "money maker," he told Clarksdale Exchange Club members. 

Birdsong worked as a
chimney sweep in the 1980s

Birdsong said when he was seven he found a directive from his father "not to cross the railroad tracks" to the poorer side of town irresistible. Birdsong said he developed a love for Clarksdale's best known commodity—the blues—at an early age. A lot of people who hung around pool halls strummed their guitars and played their harmonicas. After Birdsong graduated from high school in 1972, he moved to Memphis where he came across "juke joints" and blues performers in the older section of the downtown. When Birdsong returned to Clarksdale years later he began researching the history of the blues, dating back to 1900. Birdsong said the blues got a major push from WC. Handy, known as the "Father of the Blues" when he wrote in his autobiography in 1903 about experiences in Clarksdale after riding a train into town from Tutwiler. Birdsong said Handy wrote about hearing some "weird sounding music" that came from a guy playing a wind instrument. The weird sound was the blues, Bird-song said. Handy's fondness of the blues helped popularize it and turn into a true American folk art. 

Birdsong smiling big

Handy came to Clarksdale to direct a band called the Knights of Pythias. It turned out to be a lucrative venture for Handy who stayed in Clarksdale for six years, according to his autobiography. "The Year of the Blues was celebrated in 2003, " Birdsong said. Birdsong said those who performed the blues instrumentally, vocally or both, were often associated with "destitute" people who were around railroad depots and in juke joints. Birdsong said when Charles Peabody came down to the Mississippi Delta in 1902 from the Smithsonian Institute excavated Indian mounds he found remnants of the blues. Birdsong recalled meeting John Wrencher playing a harmonica in Memphis and how the bluesman scrimped to save enough money to go to St. Louis and later to Chicago to ply his musical skills. 

Click HERE to visit John Wrencher's memorial page

Birdsong said Wrencher returned to his roots in Clarksdale near the end of the 1970s. After a relentless, seven-year search for Wrencher's gravesite Wrencher said he found the late bluesman's plot next to where Wrencher's father's body was buried. "I had to ask some neighbors who knew Wrencher where he was buried." Birdsong said. Birdsong said an elderly woman directed him to some old burial plots in Shufordville, a community that has long since faded from memory, but was once located near present-day Lyon. Birdsong said many lesser known blues performers are buried in the Delta without grave markers. Birdsong said some aspiring young blues performers in their late teens and early 20s are trying to find a breakthrough in the recording business. 

John Wrencher in Belgium

He said what holds some back is their lack of "work ethics" which older and many deceased blues performers had ingrained in them from their childhood. "We have some really talented young artists who need time to develop their skills," Birdsong. Pointing to several individuals who made Clarksdale their adopted home for Blues performances, Bird-song said Joe Willie "Pine-top" Perkins was among them. Perkins, now 91, has been nominated for a 2005 Grammy in the Traditional Blues category for his CD, "Ladies Man." The Grammys will be presented Feb. 13 at The Staples in Los Angeles. As for his touring service, Birdsong said he often provides excursions to folks traveling through the Delta, giving them an overview of the region and its blues history. "I'll take them wherever they want to go in the Delta," Birdsong said. 

Blues Guitarist's Lack of Documentation Threatens Opportunity to Tour in Italy

Blues Guitarist's Lack of Documentation

Threatens Opportunity to Tour in Italy 

By Leah Square 2007 - Clarion Ledger

Lee Chester Ulmer was invited on an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy, an offer he gladly accepted. But when the plane leaves today, he doesn't know if he will be on it. 

The 78-year-old Ellisville blues guitar musician, who hopes to join the Mississippi-based band Afrissippi for a weeklong gig, has been on an adventure of a different kind — trying to get a passport. 

Without the proper paperwork, not to mention the U.S. Department of State's passport logjam, Ulmer has faced an uphill battle since his application process started early last month.

He has no birth certificate, no baptismal certificate, no family Bible and there's no record he received a formal education. He even says he's never been to the hospital. While his friends describe him as a "treasure in Mississippi," Ulmer doesn't exist to the government because he has no certified documentation.

"I was born in the U.S., raised in the U.S. and am a citizen of the U.S.," Ulmer said, frustrated by his dilemma. "My daddy was a sharecropper, so you know I've got to be born here." 

Bizarre Circumstances 

Ulmer was born on a backcountry plantation in Stringer in 1928. He was delivered by a midwife, so there's no certified birth certificate or hospital birth certificate. He was baptized in a creek — so no baptismal certificate. He applied for a Census record online, but the request takes three to four weeks to process — time Ulmer didn't have. He attended all-black country schools that did not keep records. Ulmer doesn't have a family Bible because it was lost in a tornado in 1939. 

Both his parents are deceased. His 12 older siblings also are deceased, so there is no one to submit an affidavit of birth. He has never been on an air-plane. The musician took a personal trip to England on an ocean liner about 50 years ago, but passports weren't required back then. 

Aware of Ulmer's situation, friend and Oxford musician Justin Showah of the band Afrissippi helped file an expedited passport application May 8 at the main post office in Laurel. The four-member country blues band invited Ulmer in April to accompany them to Italy and play in a number of cities there, including Vienna, Parma and Siena. 

Ulmer supplied the post office with everything he had to prove his existence — driver's license, voter registration card, Social Security card, musician's union card and other documents. "It weighed about 10 pounds," he said. Post office employee Judy Smith said his application was in order and sent it to New Hampshire for processing. But Ulmer got a rejection letter nine days later. 

Road block 

The citizenship evidence Ulmer had provided was "unacceptable," the letter said. The letter addressed by the U.S. Department of State said Ulmer needed to submit a statement from the state registrar of records certifying there is no birth record on file, which must be accompanied by a public record created around the date of birth. Also, the photos taken at the post office were too dark.

Baffled at the sight of another road block, Ulmer hastily refiled his application equipped with an expedited 1930 Census record. Meanwhile, Showah wondered how Smith could not have known about the birth record state-ment and other papers Ulmer needed. "I mean, she does this all the time," Showah said. "The pictures she took were too dark, so that would have held it up anyway." Doug Kyle, communications programs specialist for the Laurel post office, said his office's only job regarding passports is to go by the application guidelines furnished by the Department of State. 

"There is a checklist of things we tell customers," Kyle said. "She was acting on the things we were given." Former Jackson City Council member Marcia Weaver, business manager of Jackson musician Dorothy Moore, heard about Ulmer's situation through a mass e-mail to music enthusiasts sent by the blues-man's friends. Weaver didn't know Ulmer personally, but was moved by his story. She contacted 4th District U.S. Rep. Gene Tay-lor's office for assistance. Tay-lor aide Bill Felder secured an appointment for Ulmer with the New Orleans Passport Agency for Thursday morning to see if anyone there could straighten out the mess. "It's pretty short notice to get something done," Felder said. "All we can do is call and get an appointment." 

But Ulmer never made it to New Orleans Thursday. Too weary from the long week of running around and "getting the runaround," Ulmer banked on getting his passport by Friday from the New Hampshire office. 

A National Problem 

Felder said Ulmer's situation was further compounded by the enormous backlog the Department of State is facing with the influx of passport applications. Passports are taking 10 to 12 weeks to process and arrive in the applicant's hand, said Department of State spokes-woman Janelle Hironimus. She also said a half million applications have slipped past the 12-week deadline.

"We're getting about 1.5 mil-lion passport applications per month, and we've had 17 million for the fiscal year," Hironimus said. She added that the Department of State hopes to be caught up by September. Hironimus said she could not comment on Ulmer's case, but Felder said Ulmer's situation is not uncommon.

"There are lots of folks out there with births that were never recorded, especially people Ulmer's age," he said. "We work these kinds of cases quite often." When the plane leaves for Italy today, Ulmer hopes to be riding high with the rest of the band. When asked if he was scared about possibly taking a plane ride for the first time, Ulmer replied, "nothin' don't scare me." 

The bluesman said it will be a "miracle from God" to secure a passport in time. If it happens, he says, it will be because of the help of many people. "You wouldn't believe all these people wanting me to make that journey. "It's an amazing feeling, like love just flowing (from) every-where. That's what it feels like."