Yank Rachell, 1

Yank Rachell may have been the world's greatest blues mandolinist. Blues MANDOLIN? Yeah, you read that right. Listening to him, you wonder why there aren't hundreds of people using the mandolin to play the blues. Seems like you can go places with that mandolin that you can't reach any other way. And Mr. Rachell explored a lot of them in his long, productive life.

Born in Brownsville, TN, in 1910, Yank was in the right place at the right time for the blues recording boom of the late Twenties. He joined up with the guitarist Sleepy John Estes and harmonica/jug player Hammie Nixon in one of the great Memphis jug bands, playing the parks and clubs around Beale Street. Rachell and Estes got enough notice to be able to record 20 classic sides for Victor in 1929. There's a nice little tribute site for Rachell on MySpace where you can hear a couple of those sides:

http://www.myspace.com/yankrachell

Yank was a pretty fair singer, as you'll hear on "38 Pistol", but it's a little hard to hear his mandolin through all that surface noise! As with so many other musicians, the Depression hit his career very hard. But he kept on, and "discovered" (and made some great records with) the first Sonny Boy Williamson. After Williamson was shot to death, Rachell married, settled down to working "straight" jobs, and just about stopped playing music altogether.

Until the folk/blues revival! After his wife's death, Rachel reunited with Estes and Nixon in Chicago, and made some great records in the early-to-mid 1960s. In his mid-fifties, he sounds better than ever. Here's a wonderfully grainy 55 second clip of Rachell and Estes in 1969 (just click on Real Player or Windows Media Player on the web page to choose how to play it):

http://www.adelphirecords.com/video/YankSleepy.html

Yank settled down in Indianapolis, where he performed regularly, and he kept recording right up until his death in 1997. To my ears he never lost much, even well into his 80s.

As good as the records are, though, they only barely give an idea of what the man could do live. To see that, watch some of this video of Rachell at the Chicago Blues Festival in Grant Park. It's from May, 1993, when he was *83* years old! Unless you want to hear him tune up and talk about how cold it was outside, you can skip right to about 2:10 into this.........just get prepared to hear something that might be brand new to you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYMsRzVFXQ

To read an obituary and a couple of great stories about Yank (including one that you can hear him tell on that MySpace page: "My First Mandolin"), visit this short tribute page:

http://www.bluesworld.com/Yank.html

(hey...."Next fall when we're all eating pork, you can eat that mandolin"!!!!!!!!!!!)

If there are folks playing blues mandolin right now that you dig, please tell us about them. That's what that "Comments" thing is for:)