The Definitive Blind Willie McTell

McTell, Blind Willie

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The Works of an Archetypical Blues Legend

Think of Blind Willie McTell as Central Casting's dream composite of blues folklore. The Atlanta-based singer and guitarist was blind, which puts him in the crowded fraternity of blind blues singers of the 1930s—alongside Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Willie Johnson, and others. McTell was no stranger to whiskey and barroom violence, and sang about those things in vivid detail, sometimes giving roadhouse story-songs the feeling of tragedy. Like John Lee Hooker, the guitarist and singer born Samuel McTell recorded for several different labels at once by using various pseudonyms—among them Blind Willie, Georgia Bill, and Hotshot Willie. And like too many of his brethren, his 1959 death, after a brain hemorrhage, went largely unnoticed; not until reissues began in the 1970s (and Bob Dylan wrote a song immortalizing him) did the music world begin to appreciate his contribution.

The story might be typical; Blind Willie McTell's music is not. He was one of the first true virtuosos of the blues guitar; virtually everything he recorded, from the early "Statesboro Blues" on Victor Records through these more focused Okeh/ Columbia sides, exhibits a crisp sense of rhythm and a gift for making the guitar "talk." His chosen instrument was the twelve-string acoustic, and where many of his peers just rattled out big chords on it, he plucked and picked, weaving in delicate melodies that echoed the dazzle of ragtime. On the chilling "Death Room Blues" when he groans about his imminent demise in a nasal, endlessly troubled voice, McTell embodies all the dread associated with 1930s blues. And when he and his frequent accompanist Curley Weaver get going, the two sound like four or more guitarists caught up in a cutting contest, playing with all their might just to be noticed.

Genre: Blues
Released: 1993, Columbia Legacy
Key Tracks: "Lord Send Me an Angel," "Love Makin' Mama," "My Baby's Gone."
Catalog Choice: The Complete Victor Recordings, 1927–1932
Next Stop: Blind Willie Johnson: Dark Was the Night
After That: John Lee Hooker: Alone
Book Page: 492