Good Morning Blues -1978

The Story Of Eugene Powell

'BORN IN THE DESERT, RAISED IN THE SANDY FIELD...'

By Bob Eagle

For me, the hit of the 1972 Smithsonian Festival Of American Folk Life, held in Washington, D.C., was the appearance of Eugene Powell.

Eugene, who had recorded in New Orleans on Bluebird in 1936, was also known as Sonny Boy Nelson: his 'step-daddy' was one Sid Nelson. He was born at Utica, Hinds County, on 23 December, 1908. At about the age of six, a boy with a piece of wire and a homemade `arrow' shot the arrow into his right eye, resulting in his losing the eye.

At the age of seven, the family moved to the E.F. Lombardy plantation in the Delta. Here he heard the singer/guitarists Prince Flowers and Rich Flowers. He also heard some of the prisoners from the nearby Lombardy camp singing and playing their guitars on Sundays, while he was still only seven or eight years old.

About this time he took up the guitar: he recalls that he did not attend school much, possibly because of his impaired eyesight. His half-brother Bennie 'Sugar' Wilson, who is now deceased, played mandolin and may have been the inspiration for Eugene also to learn the banjo-mandolin. Eugene remembers an old, blind guitarist from Utica, known only as `Stackerlee', but he appears to have seen this man in later years, rather than in the time before he moved to Lombardy.

Eugene also spent some of his formative years in Hollandale, and played there with `Hacksaw' Harney (`Can' of Pet and Can), and with Johnny Hoeffer, a guitarist who was killed at Panther Burn (Sharkey County). But Eugene preferred to work with Willie Harris Jr. more than anyone else. Willie came from a musical family — his brothers Doc, Ned and Sam all sang: Doc and Ned also played guitar. Doc died at Hollandale, Ned in Chicago and Sam is deceased too.

Eugene last heard of Willie in Cleveland, Ohio, but there are reports of his being in Toledo and on Detroit's West Side in recent years. Powell thought Willie had not recorded before the trip to New Orleans, and said they were working together in Mississippi when one Willie Harris recorded in Chicago for Brunswick in 1929 and 1930, so it seems the Brunswick artist is another man despite some aural similarity. Willie was known as 'Brother', and commonly seconded Powell's fluid picking.

Other musicians remembered around Hollandale were Will Hadley, a guitarist who came into town with harp-player Robert Hill; and two brothers Sol (left-handed) and Touma, both guitarists, and another guitar-player Dennis.

Eugene bought himself a Silvertone guitar in about 1933 and inserted an aluminium resonator into it like those found on the National guitars. He also fitted a seventh string, using the twelve-string models as his inspiration: the extra string was a 'C', an octave higher than the conventional string. This was the arrange-ment he used in the 1936 recording session.

By about 1934, Eugene was in Marion, Ark., where he renewed his friendship with Hacksaw, and also recalls seeing guitarist Big Jim Richard-son, who was then an old man and weighed over 200 pounds. Powell remembers him singing `Bottle It Up And Go', apparently some years before Tommy McClennan recorded the song. Later Eugene went to Memphis, where he bought a Stella guitar.

Meanwhile, he returned to the Delta, picking cotton between Delta City and Anguilla. Here he married a singer, Mississippi Matilda, in September 1935. However he was also well-known around Wayside, south of Greenville, at this time, with his partner Willie Harris. Eugene was known as 'Red' in this area because of his light-pigmented skin.

Bo Carter, still then a successful recording artist, heard Matilda sing, and she and her husband, along with 'Brother' and other members of the circle of friends of the Chatmon brothers, made the trip to New Orleans to record.

Although Eugene was best-known in Mississippi by his real name, for some reason his step-father's name was adopted to give him a pseudonym. Generally his six sides are unusual. They feature very crammed vocal lines, with intricate picking by Eugene, who utilized a 'drumming' effect on the treble strings, while 'Brother' played the bass part. 'Pony Blues', his last title, is not the same as other songs with similar lames.

After this, Gene and Matilda continued to play music and pick cotton at Hollandale, Delta City, Scott and other towns in the Greenville/ Greenwood areas. Matilda had eight children by Gene, and she now lives with one of their daughters, Rosetta, in Chicago.

Eugene remembers a number of other musicians in these areas, including a pianist, `C.B.', who died of tuberculosis; Nate on harp (possibly Nate Scott, who was based around Drew); and a guitarist named Johnny Holt. Gene played with the late pianist, 'Big Fat', in Greenwood, and remembers guitarists 'Nub' and Johnnie Mac Hardy from around Indianola and Moorehead. There was also the late Andrew Hardy, a guitarist from that area who made a big impression on the younger Charlie Booker.

Another well-known and respected musician was Amzie Byrd, who played both violin and guitar. He had his own plantation in Humphreys County, between Belzoni and Hollandale, but is now deceased. Although the Library of Congress files show he recorded in Parchman behind Jim Henry and Eugene Wise in 1937 and Ross 'Po' Chance' Williams in 1939, there must be doubt about this: Eugene, Stackhouse and Hacksaw all knew Amzie and said that he was not in Parchman, although his brother had life there and his son also. Possibly pseudonyms were used for these recordings and Amzie's name was taken over completely?

Amzie had played with a guitarist remembered as `Dulcie' in Hazlehurst. `Dulcie' also worked with Willie Fierce, Jack Holmes, Mott Willis and a jazz band known as the Nitta Yuma Band: he now lives in Greenville.

Another musician who travelled widely in the area was a woman who stayed in Memphis and is remembered only as 'Aunt'. She played guitar 'just like Sister Rosetta Tharpe', but from photos it is clear the two were not the same.

Eugene also remembered a guitarist known as Ben Patton, who was said to be related to Charlie Patton. Ben was a 'little low' man who ) sang well and was supposed to have been in Parchman. He has passed, but was living in ;Drew and may be the man Dave Evans heard about, who was known as Ben Maree.

In 1952, Gene and Matilda separated. She I continued to farm at Scott, north of Greenville, for a few years before moving to Chicago. Eugene seems at this time to have moved to Greenville.

Here he played with the late piano-player `Blind Bob', and a harp-player Joe Reynolds (not the pre-war guitarist who recorded under that name). Joe also played with the late Tom Toy, a guitarist who stayed at Wilmot, out from Greenville, but was based at Tunica.  Eugene recalls that Tom sang 'Catfish' and said he died in Florida. Then there was 'Vamp', reputedly an excellent guitarist, who is now a mail carrier in New York City: 'Vamp' is none other than Lonnie Holmes, who recorded for Trumpet with Willie Love in 1951, and sang Hand Me Down My Walking Cane'. Gene also remembered the late 'Big Shimmy', a guitarist from Knox Lake, near Leland.

Eugene himself had married again. His wife took sick some years ago and he has devoted most of his time to looking after her. His playing became very much a part-time thing, and he increasingly played for himself rather than for an audience: he began to sing less, concentrating on the guitar.

John Fahey (in his booklet Charley Patton) states that Eugene is the second guitarist, where it appears, on the sides by the Chatman Brothers (Lonnie and Sam) made the same day as the 'Sonny Boy Nelson' session. Possibly his talent with the instrument and his obvious

Eugene Powell with son 'Little Man', right, and friend, Greenville, Miss. 1978 (Valerie Wilmer) enthusiasm for it, were the basis of this arrangement. Fahey's booklet contained the first indication that Gene had been rediscovered, although in fact he had been recorded in Greenville by Gene Rosenthal and Mike Stewart the year before (1970), for Rosenthal's Adelphi label.

However the strong bond between Eugene and his ailing wife had the unfortunate side-effect of preventing his travelling far from home, and any comeback on the college circuit seemed out of the question. Finally, the 1972 Smithsonian Festival came near, and there were plans for special emphasis on blues from the Jackson, Mississippi area. Steve LaVere was asked to help bring people to the Festival and to assist in settling the performers who were to come. Steve and I discussed the possibility of Eugene going along, and as Gene was able to find a relative to look after his wife for a few days, he was included in the programme.

The trip to Washington was great. Stack-house, Hacksaw, Sam Chatmon and Eugene had known each other for years, and it was like a reunion. To cap it off, we picked up Harmonica Frank in Cincinnati, and he and Eugene hit it off well, swapping yarns and so forth.

The Festival began 29 June. One of Eugene's tricks was to play 'Poor Boy' with the guitar
flat on his lap, fretting it with a pen-knife, but it soon became clear that the song he liked best himself was a stomp, involving intricate finger-picking on the treble strings and much snapping of the bass string a la Willie Brown. Eventually he recalled about three verses and the piece became known as 'Sandy Field' because the first line ran: 'I was born out in the desert, raised up in the sandy field'.

Eugene played guitar duets with Hacksaw, with Sam Chatmon and, from memory, Stack-house as well. Perhaps the most successful set was with Hacksaw, since their styles are closest, but Powell received a good reception through-out. Eugene also recorded further titles for Adelphi on 4 and 5 July, 1972, and the proposed album should be excellent.

Gene then appeared at the second River City Blues Festival in Memphis on 24 November, 1972 and once again the reviews were excellent. He was to appear at the San Diego Festival in April 1974, with Sam Chatmon, but his wife lost her daughter and it seems that it will be even more difficult for him to get some time to travel in the future. But he is such an exuberant performer and talented picker that surely a solution will be found to enable him both to care for his wife and to receive some acclaim for his art.

Sam Chatmon Talks with Lou Curtiss

By Lou Curtiss, May 2011

Sam Chatmon was one of the most remarkable individuals I have ever known. During the years he spent in San Diego (1966-1982, where he became an important part of the blues scene), I had a lot of chances to sit and talk with him. This excerpt is taken from one of those conversations.

I was born in 1899 at a little place between Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi, called Bolden, at a man’s place called John Gaddess. There were so many of us in the family then. My Daddy [Henderson Chatmon] had had three wives and my mother had the least [amount of] children of any of them, which was 13. Daddy said he had 60 children with the three wives, but that ain’t counting Charlie Patton and all of them on the outside. Papa died in 1934 when he was 109 years old. My grandmother lived to be 125. She said she’d come from the place where they’d caught the slaves on the Niger river. She said, “They’s put molasses out and catch them and herd them into a boat.” My Daddy was a fiddler in the slavery time too and when we kids messed off he’d tell us about how it was in them days. I remember once going out and playing music at night, and the next morning my brother Bert asked me how much I had made. I complained that I didn’t make nothing but a dollar and a half. Daddy’d yell out, “Well you ought to be happy; I had to play every night and didn’t get nothing but a whipping.”

They used to have long troughs just like you’d have to feed hogs out of and would give you cornbread with as much rat fertilizer in the meal as there was corn. They’d put that old black bread in those troughs for the little children and make them eat out of there just like the hogs. They’d grease their mouths every Sunday with a meat skin on a string. My Daddy would always linger behind and try to get that meat skin, because it would be the only meat he could ever get. Every morning before they left the house, they’d have to come up to the master with a strap and let her whup them. Then she’d say, “You all be good little children. Go ahead now and get your breakfast.” And they’d line up at the trough.

My Father would play music with old Milton Bracy, just two fiddles and no other instruments. He didn’t play no music like we played, but just those old breakdowns: “Old Grey Mule,” “Chickens in the Breadpan Kickin’ Up Dough,” “Hen Laid the Eggs,” and all them things.

Can’t get the saddle on the old grey mule
Can’t get the saddle on the old grey mule
Whoa! Whoa!
Can’t get the saddle on the old grey mule

He had whiskers down to his waist and sometimes he’d have to tie them to the side with a cord to hold them off the fiddle. He didn’t play too much by the time I was around but if my brother Lonnie wanted Daddy to play, he’d just start fiddling one of his old tunes. Then Daddy would say, “Boy, that ain’t no way to play it, bring that violin here and let me show you how.” Those old square dance tunes took a bow arm to play, but these blues and things takes a pull. Lonnie had learned to play the fiddle by reading the music. He was the only brother that could read. When the white folks wanted us to play something, they’d buy the sheet music in Jackson and give it to us. Then Lonnie would tell us all our parts and it was like we’d known it all our lives.

Music was just a giving thing in our family. I got it from watching my brothers. It’s just like driving a car. You sit next to somebody and watch what they do and you can do the same thing with a little practice. If you ain’t got nerve to try it you can still make a little stab. My brother’s and sisters all played; my Daddy and Mama too. My cousins the McCoys [Joe and Charlie] and the McCollums [Robert, who later became Robert Nighthawk] all played too. We all played so many pieces, I could be here several hours just listing them for you. I wrote the words and Lonnie wrote the music for several of our best known tunes like “Ants in My Pants,” “Sittin’ on Top of the World,” “Stop and Listen,” “Corrina Corrina,” and “Pencil Won’t Write No More.” We also did all the old blues and written songs from the sheet music like “Alberta,” “Sheiks of Arabee,” and “Sleepytime Down South.” I started playing guitar when I was four years old. Even before I started to play I remember my older half brother Ferdinand [who made records under the name Alec Johnson] and Charlie Patton singing about the first blues I ever heard, something about “going down to the river” and “if the blues don’t leave me I’ll rock away and drown.” The first tune I learned to pick was “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor.” Me and Lonnie put that out later as “If You Don’t Want Me, You Don’t Have to Dog Me Around” and folks thought it was a new tune that I’d got out. I’d sing a verse and then holler, “Oh, step on it,” and Lonnie would get out on that fiddle.

When I was seven, I started playing bass viol with my brother Lonnie – bull fiddle they called it then. I had to carry a box along so I could reach it. I didn’t see no banjos until I was 18 in Memphis. I picked up the tenor banjo then tuned it like the first four strings of a guitar. All of us nine brothers played together. Lonnie and Edgar played the violins; Harry played guitar, piano, or violin; Willie and Bert played the guitar; Bo played guitar, banjo, and sometimes violin; and brother Laurie played the drums. I usually played the bass and sometimes guitar. Our cousin Charlie McCoy often joined us on the mandolin and sometimes his brother Joe came along too. Neighbor Walter Vincent joined us in 1921. We usually called ourselves the Mississippi Sheiks but sometimes in different groupings we were Chatmon’s Mississippi Hot Footers” and often just Lonnie and I would go out [sometimes joined by Charlie McCoy] as the Mississippi Mud Steppers.

We used to play in the white folks’ houses or halls. Sometimes we’d play for a white man at a dance for three hours at six dollars per musician and then work 15 hours in the field for the same man for 50 cents the next day. When we put on a dance for our own people, we’d rent the hall for two dollars and charge them two bits at the door to get in. But mostly we’d work the white folks’ dances.

The only other band around was the Carter Brothers and Henry Reed. Lonnie sometimes played with them because he didn’t like to farm. The rest of us brothers planted a crop every year and when we were working out crops, Lonnie’d go over to Raymond and play with the Carter Brothers. I don’t know any other bands around there then and we were the main band people would call.

We used to play all the time at Cooper’s Wells and at Brown’s Wells where the healing waters were. That’s right near the county seat of Hinds County. Even after I moved to Hollandale in 1928, I’d leave off all the time to play for those people. They usually didn’t have much more than 35 couples there; that’d be about all you’d have. Sometimes we’d play for square dances too. In fact, the last dance we did was a square dance [shortly before Lonnie and Harry died]. It was at a hall built over the back of the Sunflower River below Hollandale. They were passing around whiskey in molasses buckets there. We never called the dances; a white man in a long dress coat and a fancy cane would do that. I always liked the blues, foxtrots, and one-steps the best, because on a square dance you’d never get a chance to change chords. Sometimes those tunes would last for a whole hour and just when you thought it was over, someone would call, “Promenade to the bar treat all the women folks to a drink,” and then we’d have to start back again.

In 1928, we went to Atlanta and recorded for a fellow named Brock. He’s come out to our place and found us there and asked me, Lonnie, Bo, and Walter to go. He didn’t want no bass fiddle so I played guitar. That's where we first used the name the Mississippi Sheiks as we were all from Bolden, Mississippi. They gave me 20 dollars and Lonnie, Bo, and Walter 30 dollars each and no royalties. That’s the time we put out “Stop and Listen” and “Sittin’ on Top of the World.” Bo changed his name to Carter so he could record separate from us. This guy Brock had him under contract. Later on my brothers Lonnie and Harry did the same so they could record separate too. Walter Vincent became Walter Jacob for the same reason. I never changed my name for any reason except at birth. I was named “Vivian” and I changed it to “Sam” because that was a girl’s name and I didn’t want to be named after no woman.

The next time I recorded was in Jackson and that was the time all of us brothers were there: Bo, Lonnie, Harry, Seth, Edgar, Willie, myself, and Walter Vincent, Charlie and Joe McCoy were there with Memphis Minnie. I did some duets with Bo and also a couple with Charlie McCoy [Charlie and I had been playing out as a duet in that time]. I didn’t go to a session again until 1936 when Lonnie and I recorded as the Chatmon Brothers for Bluebird. After that I was going to record for a man by the name of Williams in Chicago but he tried to beat me out of some money and blackmail me because I didn’t belong to the union. So I told him, “I ain’t got nothing to do with you.”

In the year of 1937 I lost three brothers (including Lonnie and Harry) and two sisters and after that our band didn’t play together. Also my picking partner Charlie McCoy moved on to Chicago to join his brother’s band (the Harlem Hamfats). I took up picking some with Eugene Powell (AKA Sonny Boy Nelson) but I never did any more recording. I kept farming til 1950. I rented that land and worked it ‘til I quit with my own team and all. Then I went to work as a night watchman and bought me a house and a half acre. I didn’t play much music until 1965 when Ken Swerilas [a San Diego record collector] came by and talked me into coming out to California to play.

Starting in 1966 Sam started coming regularly out to the West Coast, where he became part of the regular lineup at THE SAN DIEGO STATE FOLK FESTIVAL in 1969. He remained a part of that festival until 1982. During that time Sam made new recordings for Blue Goose, Rounder (which I had the honor of co-producing) and Flying Fish (he also recorded sides that appeared on collections from Advent and Arhoolie and there was an LP on an Italian label recorded by a couple of Italian collectors in his hometown of Hollandale). Shortly before his passing Sam took part in a series done by Alan Lomax called “Confessions of the Noble Old” for PBS television. He died in 1982.

The Father of the Father - Prince McCoy Revealed in Photo

Newspaper article from October 2017

Even the father of the blues received
inspiration and tutelage from somewhere.

Nobody is calling Prince McCoy the grandfather of the blues, but if he influenced W.C. Handy, commonly called the “Father of the Blues,” then a good case can be made that this one-time janitor at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine is indeed a key player in the development of an American art form that helped give birth to rock ‘n’ roll, country and about every popular music form.

Today, in his childhood home of Greenville, Miss., McCoy will get a historical marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail, joining a roster of some of the most revered artists in all of American music, including Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis Presley, John Lee Hooker and of course, Handy, who is credited with taking the blues to the mainstream with his compositions “St. Louis Blues,” “Yellowdog Blues” and “Beale Street Blues.”

Handy was an orchestra leader who played polished show tunes and marches. Though he was exposed to the blues in the late 1800s, he had what music historians call an “enlightenment” to the power of that music in the early 1900s.

In his 1941 autobiography, Handy wrote about playing a dance for white people at a courthouse in Cleveland, Miss. At one point, some people in the crowd asked Handy to play “some of our native music.”

Handy gave it a shot, but the crowd was not satisfied and asked instead if a local band could play, according to Jim O’Neal, a researcher for the blues trail.

A trio of ragged-looking musicians took the stage, led by a guitar player who Handy described as a “long-legged chocolate boy.” They commenced to rock the courthouse with a style of music that had the crowd dancing and tossing silver dollars at the stage in appreciation.

Handy stood on the sidelines amazed, not just at the music’s raw power, but the ecstatic reaction from the crowd. The scene, and others, convinced Handy that the music deserved a wider audience, O’Neal said.

“That showed him the beauty of primitive music,” O’Neal said. “It was not for the art of it, but for what it could do to a crowd.”

Early clue

The trio was left nameless, but Handy researcher Elliott Hurwitt has found at least four unpublished manuscripts of Handy’s autobiography that identify the “long-legged chocolate boy” as Prince McCoy, a popular band leader in the Mississippi Delta at the time.

For unknown reasons, McCoy’s name was stricken from the published autobiography, relegating him to obscurity.

Hurwitt’s discovery, which he made in 2006, has rekindled interest in McCoy. A historical marker at the site of the courthouse dance in Cleveland was unveiled in 2013, mentioning McCoy’s impact on Handy.

But for all his influence on Handy, little is known about McCoy.

“Basically, he’s a phantom at this point,” Hurwitt said.

He was born Prince Albert McCoy in Louisiana in 1882 and moved to Greenville, Miss., with his mother. At some point, he became a musician, leading an orchestra that played dances, civic functions, and even the Alabama-Ole Miss football game in 1910.

In 1927, he left Mississippi for Winston-Salem and married the former Carrie Young of Chester County, S.C.

He and Carrie first show up in the city directory in 1934, where he listed his occupation as a musician, living on East Eighth Street. O’Neal’s research shows that he played with an eight-piece orchestra that traveled with Maxey’s Medicine Show, entertaining the crowd with vaudeville songs.

“This was a big show on the scale of the larger minstrel shows with a fleet of vehicles carrying people around,” O’Neal said. “It was a free show, and Maxey would make his money trying to sell tonics to the crowd.”

O’Neal found one advertisement of the medicine show playing in Boston, giving McCoy, a product of the segregated South, a chance to see the country.

Around 1943, McCoy left music as a professional pursuit and became a janitor for the Bowman Gray School of Medicine, a position he held for several years. Late in life, he moved to Blair’s Rest Home on East Fourth Street, and died on Feb. 4, 1968, at the age of 85. He and Carrie, who died in 1962 at the age of 62, had no children, and no relatives have been found.

McCoy is buried at Evergreen Cemetery off New Walkertown Road, with his simple, nondescript grave marker engraved with the words: Prince McCoy, 1882-1968. The other day, it was mostly covered in fallen leaves and twigs and a film of sandy soil.

The Mississippi Blues Trail and Hurwitt are among those hungry for information on McCoy. He never published or recorded music, so there is no trail of documentation that could give glimpses into his musical career. There are anecdotes from Handy’s band that the music that McCoy played that night in Cleveland may have prompted Handy to record “Memphis Blues,” one of Handy’s biggest hits. But those recollections are murky and unverifiable, Hurwitt said.

It’s not even certain that the music McCoy played that night was the blues. McCoy was, after all, an orchestra leader, making it perhaps more likely that he was playing ragtime that night, and not the blues.

“(Handy) does say that McCoy’s band played a type of downhome music that influenced him and allowed him to see working-class black music as a source of material worth adapting and arranging and playing commercially,” Hurwitt said, “and that’s very big stuff.”

Looking for information on McCoy, O’Neal contacted the Winston-Salem Journal last week hoping readers might provide some information on McCoy or unearth a photograph that would, at least, put a face to a musician whose contributions have been lost to time.

Earlier this week, a librarian at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Coy C. Carpenter Library flipped through stacks of company newsletters in search of McCoy and came across a photo from the January 1951 edition of Baptist Hospital News.

The frame was crowded with black men and women, most likely custodial employees, at a hospital Christmas party. Two women stand in front of a punch bowl, holiday trimmings at its base. A bald, bespectacled man towers over the crowd, a violin case tucked under his left arm. He is, indeed, long-legged.

The caption for the photo identifies him as someone who “proved his ability as a violinist for the occasion.”

It was Prince McCoy.

UPDATE - Winston-Salem Journal - January 6, 2018.

Alma Peay’s memories of Prince McCoy are somewhat hazy. After all, she was a young child of maybe 4 or 5 years old when she lived next to him in a duplex between Patterson Avenue and Chestnut Street in the 1950s.

A picture of the tall, bespectacled man that ran in the Winston-Salem Journal in October stirred her memories.

“I remember him playing fiddle,” said Peay, adding that he was quiet and kind.

Not much is known about McCoy, who died in 1968 at the age of 85. But music historians are hungry for information on the violinist, who set aside a professional music career to work as a janitor at Bowman Gray School of Medicine for several years.

The day the story ran in the Journal, the state of Mississippi erected a historical marker in Greenville, Miss., honoring McCoy’s contribution to the blues. The marker is part of the Mississippi Blues Trail, whose honorees also include B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf and Elvis Presley, among other musical pioneers. McCoy is credited with exposing W.C. Handy, the Father of the Blues, to the primitive style of music that was popular among working-class black people in the early 1900s.

Handy took the blues to the mainstream, which eventually led to the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, making McCoy an important footnote in America’s cultural history.

In his 1941 autobiography, Handy recalled seeing a “long-legged chocolate boy” in Cleveland, Miss., playing a raucous style of music that rocked the house. Unpublished manuscripts of the autobiography, discovered by Handy researcher, Elliott Hurwitt, indicate that the musician was McCoy, a popular band leader in the Mississippi Delta at the time.

That makes McCoy of considerable interest to blues scholars.

The problem is that they know so little about him. In an interview in October, Hurwitt called McCoy a “phantom” to researchers.

The trail on McCoy turned cold after he moved to Winston-Salem from the Deep South, in the late 1920s. He married Carrie Young, formerly of Chester, S.C., and worked as a musician before taking on steadier work as a janitor at what is know known as the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

The blues trail folks in Mississippi hadn’t been able to find any photos of McCoy and no known recordings exist.

At the request of the Journal, librarians at the Coy C. Carpenter Library at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center scanned their records and came across the only known photo of McCoy from a company newsletter in January 1951. McCoy towers above several fellow employees at a Christmas party for the black employees, a violin case tucked under his left arm, indicating he had been part of the party’s music program.

Peay saw the photo and story in the Journal and recollected the tall, soft-spoken man who used to play his violin on the front porch of the duplex that the McCoys lived in, next to Peay and her mother and grandparents.

The McCoys and the Peays attended First Baptist Church, then on the corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets.

In December, Peay viewed a film that someone in the church made to commemorate the groundbreaking of its new home on Highland Avenue, on Jan. 26, 1947. It is remarkable footage, showing streams of churchgoers in long coats and hats, dressed in their Sunday finest on a cold and misty winter day. The sharp-eyed Peay spotted McCoy, playing in a small orchestra outside the site of the new church, a violin propped against his chin.

Unfortunately, there is no sound to the footage.

Peay watched the film again recently, with Rev. Paul Robeson Ford, the church’s new pastor.

As she watched people file out of the church and onto the sidewalk, she pointed to the ones that she knew. When the camera panned to McCoy, Peay identified the young clarinet player in front of him as Christine Hedgley, the daughter of the church’s pastor at the time, Rev. David Hedgley.

She is now Christine Hedgley Johnson, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., after a long career with the U.S. Public Health Commissioned Corps. In the film, she was about 11 years old, and was a student at 14th Street Elementary School.

“In the black community at that time, if you played an instrument in the school band, you automatically played in the church band,” Johnson said last month.

She knew McCoy as a reserved man who played jazz gigs with local black musicians, including Harry Wheeler, a legendary band director at the old Atkins High School.

“Most of his music was outside the church. White people paid for him and his band to play gigs, their graduations and receptions and stuff like that,” Johnson said. “He did a lot of music for the doctors when they had receptions and Christmas parties.”

McCoy died on Feb. 4, 1968, at the age of 85, with his contributions to the larger world of music unknown until last year.