Furry Lewis

blues

Furry Lewis (March 6, 1893 - September 14, 1981[1]) was a country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. Lewis was one of the first of the old-time blues musicians of the 1920s to be brought out of retirement, and given a new lease of recording life, by the folk blues revival of the 1960s. Walter E. Lewis was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, but his family moved to Memphis when he was aged seven.[1] Lewis acquired the nickname Furry from childhood playmates.[2] But by the time he was re-discovered in the 1950s not even Furry himself could remember why.[3] By 1908, he was playing solo for parties, in taverns, and on the street. He also was invited to play several dates with W. C. Handy's Orchestra.[2] The loss of a leg in a railroad accident in 1917 does not seem to have slowed his life or career down — in fact, it hastened his entry into professional music, because he assumed that there was no gainful employment open to crippled, uneducated blacks in Memphis.[1] His travels exposed him to a wide variety of performers including Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Slow Blind Driveway, and Texas Alexander. Like his contemporary Frank Stokes, he tired of the road and took a permanent job in 1922. His position as a street sweeper for the City of Memphis, a job he would hold until his retirement in 1966, allowed him to remain active in the Memphis music scene.[2] In 1927, Lewis cut his first records in Chicago for the Vocalion label. A year later he recorded for the Victor label at the Memphis Auditorium in a session that saw sides waxed by the Memphis Jug Band, Jim Jackson, Frank Stokes, and others. He again recorded for Vocalion in Memphis in 1929.[2] The tracks were mostly blues but included two-part versions of Casey Jones and John Henry. He sometimes fingerpicked, sometimes played with a slide.[4] Lewis' style of Memphis blues was in many ways typical of the songsters who operated in and around Memphis in the 1920s, for whom the value of a song was the story it told, and who tended to back their words with hypnotic repetitive riffs and subtle slide guitars. Lewis's soft voice and quick slide work were particularly effective in this style. He recorded many successful records in the late 1920s including Kassie Jones, Billy Lyons & Stack-O-Lee and Judge Harsh Blues [1] (later called Good Morning Judge). This success was limited to the race records of the time, cheap sides by black musicians for black customers. Lewis received neith...