 |
||||
| Greenville area info | Memo-News | Area photos | Art news | History | Outdoor-indoor | Pets & animals | Links | Home | E-mail
Greenville Blues Man, Cootie Stark Visits to an aunt in Greenville (SC) when Cootie was 12 presented him with the Piedmont blues influences that root his guitar style today. "Greenville had good talent back then," he said. "Baby Tate used to play on the street there, and that's how I come to know him. Then I got a guitar when I was 14, and I learned songs from my Uncle Chump and a bunch of songs from Baby Tate." Three years after picking up the instrument, Cootie was playing street corners in Greenville and square dances in the outlying counties. He began what he calls his "traveling years" after turning 20, performing on the streets of Asheville, Knoxville, Greensboro, Columbia and other Southern cities and playing with elder musicians who would one day be recognized as blues legends: Pink Anderson, Peg Leg Howell, Simmie Dooley, Peg Leg Sam and Josh White (Cootie knew White as "John White"), but while Tate and White each recorded music that still endures, Cootie remained in unrecorded obscurity, moving from town to town, playing for whatever he could get. "People would talk about, 'Oh, he got a good gift,' but all they knew was to give me a drink of liquor or a nickel or a dime or two," he says. --Peter Cooper, from "Sugar Man" CD booklet. BACK to the - - - Main menu sections of this website Greenville area info | Memo-News | Area photos Email Privacy Policy: Your e-mail is encouraged and welcomed and your privacy is important. This Web site is maintained by one person and your e-mail goes to that individual only. Your e-mail address is not traded, sold, or offered in any way to anyone. You will not receive junk e-mail from this Web site, So fire away. © 2006 greenvillesouth.com --gs
|
||||
--gs |
||||
