MY MOST UNFORGETTABLE BLUESMAN

He used to say, with that twinkle in his eye, "Hand me that bottle, you motherloving good-for-nothing white illegitimate child," and I would. I learned a lot about life from him, and a few things about death, and once or twice I got the blues from him.

When I first met W.C., he had been only just rediscovered. Early in the 60's, that era of rapid change, many old blues singers and performers who had long been thought dead were found. They were living in obscurity, some as pensioners, some as derelicts; and a new generation of enthusiasts tracked them down through references to the places where they lived in their songs, distant relatives, and FBI files on black subversives. W.C. was not among the most famous of these: in fact, he was well known for being the only singer in the 1930s who had been left off Harry Smith's Anthology. You only had to listen to him to understand why.

I first saw him at a Folk Festival in Newport, which was at that time a Mecca for young people interested in folk music and the blues. He was holding forth to a workshop of worshipful youngsters, many of whom had never seen a black man in the flesh, and certainly not one who could give The Kingston Trio a run for their money.

He was a gruff drunk, and never took a bath. He once said to me when I mentioned to him that no one would play on stage with him because of the smell, that "I got the dirt of Parchman on me forty years ago, and I ain't washin' it off for nobody, you mother loving good for nothing white illegitimate child." That was his kind of honest grit, and I admired him for it.

He was full of colorful sayings, that came from his many years of hard work and difficulty. "When you bein' followed by a policeman, watch yourself," was one saying. One afternoon, after he had been playing his guitarfor minutes at a time, and was now resting on the ground with a bottle of gin, he looked up at me and said: "Me, I don't play music, music is, well, I don't rightly know, it comes out of this hole here, like a rabbit, and there must be more of it where that came from, like rabbits, there's always more where they come from, and I need a woman, can you find me one fast?"

Once he told me a story about his father and a blind horse, but I don't remember it.

The last time I saw W.C. he didn't say anything interesting, in part because he was dead on a slab of concrete, just as the song said.

I will always remember him, so I guess that makes him unforgettable, doesn't it?