Yank Rachell

James "Yank" Rachell (born March 16, 1910 in Brownsville , Tennessee , † April 9, 1997 in Indianapolis , Indiana ) was an American blues musician who made the mandolin popular as a blues instrument. He also played guitar, harmonica and violin. He made recordings with Sleepy John Estes and Sonny Boy Williamson .

biography

Yank Rachell's first encounter with the mandolin is one of the great blues legends. The eight-year-old had been entrusted by his mother with a piglet that was to be slaughtered in the autumn. The boy traded the piglet for a mandolin that he had heard and that he really wanted. His angry mother is said to have said, "If we all eat pork next fall, you can eat this mandolin."

Rachell taught herself to play the mandolin. Hambone Willie Newborn , who first recorded Rollin 'And Tumblin in 1929 , put the finishing touches on it. The two performed in the Brownsville area, where Rachell also met guitarist Sleepy John Estes , who would become his longtime partner.

Rachell and Estes formed a youth band trio with the youth player Hammie Nixon , which formed in Memphis (Tennessee) in the mid-1920s . Here Rachell and Estes were later one of the successful music groups on Beale Street with pianist Jab Jones as the Three J's Jug Band . From 1929 they made some recordings, of which Divin 'Duck Blues was particularly successful.

The Depression marked the end of the Memphis blues scene, and Rachell went back to Brownsville, where he married and worked for the railroad. He continued to make music on weekends. It was on such an occasion that he met Sonny Boy Williamson , with whom he played frequently from then on. In 1938 the two went to Chicago to take pictures there. Their collaboration ended in 1948 with the death of Williamson.

Rachell moved to St. Louis , then to Indianapolis in 1958 . At the beginning of the 1960s a blues revival set in, in the wake of which Rachell, Estes and Nixon also performed together again. Shortly before his death in 1997, Yankell recorded one last album, Too Hot For The Devil (1996), bringing the length of time between his first and last recordings to a record 67 years.

Yank Rachell had a not insignificant influence on other musicians. BB King is said to have told him: "It was people like you who made people like me possible." Some of the songs by Rachell that were later picked up by other musicians include Loudella Blues (a hit for Jimmy Rogers ) and Gravel Road Woman ( from which Blind Boy Fuller made I Don't Want No Skinny Woman ). And the Divin 'Duck Blues is considered a first-class blues classic.

bibliography

• Richard Congress: Blues Mandolin Man: The Life And Music Of Yank Rachell.

Discography

• Yank Rachell (1964)
• Chicago style
• Mandolin blues
• Blues Mandolin Man (1986)
• Pig Trader Blues (1995) (with David Morgan)
• Too Hot For The Devil (1996) (with Allen Statyner and Pat Webb)
• James "Yank" Rachell, Volume 1 and 2

Web links

• Biography at All Music Guide