"There's been Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, there's been Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes, Skip James, etc. They became legendary in their lifetime or the White counterculture saved them in extremis from oblivion in the '60s. ... These musicians didn't meet their destiny at a crossroad; no folk or blues label rediscovered them. They never got a second chance. They had to accept lowly jobs unrelated to their art. They survived. Most of them came from Mississippi, Memphis, St. Louis. They were all highly unique, and they recorded at a young age - a very young age in some cases - in the '20s. They would walk into a hotel, guitar in hand, for a recording session or two. For some, we don't even know their names, since they cut a few 78rpm sides and left for who knows where. Their traces get lost in the Great Depression. ...”
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