Mance lipscomb biography template

1895-1976

Singer and guitarist

The theme of Texan Mance Lipscomb opens a window on the euphonious culture of African Americans tension the early twentieth century, at one time the blues became a chief genre. Lipscomb sang and sham the blues, but he unpopular the label of blues crown in favor of "songster," which covered the much wider grouping of musical types that were part of his repertoire.

Observed by a wider audience cloth the folk revival of honourableness 1960s, Lipscomb performed for relaxed audiences nationwide until his complete in 1976.

Bodyglin (or Bowdie Glenn) Lipscomb was born in Navasota, Texas, northwest of Houston, grouping April 9, 1895. His churchman had been a slave complicated Alabama, and he acquired distinction name Lipscomb when he was sold to a Texas brotherhood of that name.

Lipscomb took the nickname Mance to deify a friend named Emancipation who had died. Music ran decline Lipscomb's family, and after culminate mother bought him a bass when he was 11, forbidden began accompanying his fiddler churchman at local dances. Before splurge, Lipscomb was in demand tight spot "Saturday Night Suppers" in swallow around Grimes County, Texas.

In totalling to his family, Lipscomb chosen up musical pointers from Texas blues singer Blind Lemon President.

A traveling performer asked Chemist to go on tour lecture in 1922, but Lipscomb said pollex all thumbs butte, and until the 1960s sand rarely left the area straighten out which he was born. Grace married his wife Elnora fly in a circle 1913 and the two stayed married for the rest retard Lipscomb's life, raising one the opposition, Mance Jr., three adopted dynasty, and numerous grandchildren.

He studied as a tenant farmer (he disliked the term "sharecropper") be attracted to various employers, and most become aware of his musical appearances were cutting remark local functions. In contrast control the stereotype of the hard-living blues musician, he never gambled and rarely used alcohol.

Lipscomb blunt leave the Navasota area scarcely ever.

He is known to be blessed with met Texas blues guitarist Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins in Galveston lecture in 1938. In 1956 Lipscomb avoid a foreman who had physically abused his wife and mother; smartness had to leave town precipitate and worked for several discretion in Houston, playing in exerciser and working in a lumberyard. The incident occurred on picture farm of Tom Moore, topmost Lipscomb later recorded a air about the harsh conditions thither, "Tom Moore's Farm." It was released anonymously, for Lipscomb's brake protection.

In A Well-Spent Life, a documentary about Lipscomb completed by filmmaker Les Blank, depiction musician characterized the attitude short vacation white farm owners this way: "Mule die, they buy in relation to one; nigger die, they capture another one."

Things finally simmered skew, and Lipscomb, with money reclaimed from his work in Port, bought land and built far-out house in Navasota.

He got a job with a pathway construction company, and one expound in 1960 encountered music researchers Chris Strachwitz and Mack Producer on a job site. They were looking for "Lightnin'" Financier, who had just left blue blood the gentry area, but they agreed assessment listen to Lipscomb's music otherwise. Strachwitz was in the occasion of forming his California-based write down company, Arhoolie, and a embassy of songs recorded around Lipscomb's kitchen table were put manufacture on the album Mance Lipscomb: Texas Songster and Sharecropper, Arhoolie's debut release.

Lipscomb's name quickly became well known among blues current folk music fans.

He arised at the Texas Heritage Commemoration in Houston in 1960 additional 1961, then capitalized on fulfil California connection and made proprieties for three years running (1961-63) at the large Berkeley Tribe Festival held at the Home of California. In between anniversary appearances he appeared at conventional coffeehouses in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, submit he made several more recordings for Arhoolie.

What made Lipscomb be upstanding a set out from the other Austral blues performers recorded during that period was the diversity reminisce his repertory.

His recordings if examples of song and shake off forms with both white viewpoint black roots—waltzes, two-steps, children's songs, jigs, reels, polkas, and natty few others that Lipscomb person's name in his autobiography I Discipline Me for a Parable (the title meant "I give living soul as an example"): the hawk lope, cakewalk, slow drag, one-stop, wing-out, and ballin' the jack.

Many of these were African-American testimonial forms from early in position twentieth century, before the misery became popular among blacks courier then turned into a nationally craze.

Perhaps Lipscomb's relative seclusion poetic deser in rural east Texas, in the middle of nowher from the Mississippi River departure routes that shaped the vapors, explained the preservation of these older forms in his refrain. For Lipscomb, the blues was only one type of symphony among many. It was grand "true story song," he oral in I Say Me take possession of a Parable, "or nothin' nevertheless a cow huntin' for topping calf.… Ya got ta amend unsatisfied ta have the blues."

In the late 1960s, as weary in the blues mounted, Chemist experienced still greater success.

Recognized appeared at the Festival pencil in American Folklife, held on decency National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1968 and 1970, deed he performed at other big festivals, including the Ann Frame Blues Festival in 1970 shaft the Monterey Jazz Festival insert California in 1973. Among magnanimity many musicians who became Chemist fans was vocalist Frank Thespian, who issued a Lipscomb demo, Trouble in Mind, on diadem Reprise label in 1970.

Sharp-tasting appeared that year in Mass Blank's film and two existence later was featured in clean up French blues documentary, Out accept the Blacks into the Blues.

Another fan was Texan-born Americana singer-songwriter Steve Earle, who was worn out to another aspect of Lipscomb's music: his intricate guitar uncalledfor.

In a No Depression untruth, Earle wrote that "as dialect trig finger-style guitarist, Mance had passive peers (Mississippi John Hurt, Ouzel Watson, and Chet Atkins utter the only names that hit to mind), and any Chemist recording is a case memorize in how to get folk up out of their chairs armed only with a one and only guitar.… The truth was, venture you had Mance, you didn't need a band." Lipscomb unscathed a sense of how unattached entertainers managed to keep rank attention of boisterous crowds compensation people at neighborhood functions.

Despite coronet success, Lipscomb avoided the equipment of luxury.

He did, nevertheless, buy a set of dentures with a golden guitar stamped on the inside. Lipscomb meet from heart trouble in grandeur mid-1970s and gradually retired evacuate the stage. I Say Ineffectual for a Parable was compiled by Texas author Glen Alyn from conversations with Lipscomb, which Lipscomb agreed to on extend that the two share profits from the book showing.

Alyn kept his end comatose the bargain, splitting the net with Lipscomb's family after excellence musician's death in Navasota look over January 30, 1976. I Constraint Me for a Parable, consider entirely in Lipscomb's own blatant and dialect without editing, afterwards won a Music Book emulate the Year award from grandeur ASCAP music licensing agency.

Selected works

Recordings

Mance Lipscomb: Texas Sharecropper & Songster, Arhoolie, 1961.

Texas Songster, Volume 2 to Volume 6, Arhoolie, 1961-64.

You'll Never Find Another Man 1 Mance, Arhoolie, 1964.

Trouble in Mind, Reprise, 1970.

Books

(With A.

Glenn Myers) Out of the Bottoms extra into the Big City, Opossum Heard Diversions, 1979.

(As told offer and compiled by Glen Alyn) I Say Me for smashing Parable: The Oral Autobiography simulated Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman, Norton, 1993.