Yank Rachell

James " Yank " Rachell ( born March 16, 1910 in Brownsville, Tennessee; † 9 April 1997 in Indianapolis, Indiana ) was an American blues musician, who made the mandolin popular as a blues instrument He also played guitar, harmonica and. violin. He also recorded with Sleepy John Estes and Sonny Boy Williamson.

Biography

Yank Rachells first encounter with the mandolin is one of the great blues legends. The eight year old was from his mother a piglet been entrusted, which should be slaughtered in the autumn. The boy exchanged the piglets against a mandolin, which he had heard and he wanted to have. His angry mother to have said: " If we all eat pork next fall, then you can eat this mandolin. "

Rachell taught himself to play at on the mandolin itself. Hambone Willie Newborn which commenced in 1929 as the first Rollin 'And Tumblin', gave it the finishing touch. Both occurred in the area around Brownsville together where Rachell and Sleepy John Estes guitarists met, who would become his long-term partner.

Rachell and Estes formed with the Jug player Hammie Nixon Jugband a trio in the mid- 1920s in Memphis (Tennessee ) presented himself. Here were Rachell and later Estes and pianist Jab Jones as the Three J 's Jug Band one of the most successful music groups of Beale Street. In 1929 they made some recordings, of which especially Divin 'Duck Blues was successful.

With the depression came the end of the Memphis blues scene, and Rachell went back to Brownsville, where he married and worked for the railroad. On weekends, he continued to make music. On one such occasion he met Sonny Boy Williamson, with whom he often played together from then on. In 1938 the two went to Chicago to make there shots. Their collaboration ended in 1948 with the death of Williamson.

Rachell moved to St. Louis, in 1958 to Indianapolis. In the early 1960s began a Blues Revival, appeared together again in the wake also Rachell, Estes and Nixon. Shortly before his death in 1997 Yankell took one last album, Too Hot For The Devil (1996 ), thus the time between his first and last recordings reached a record-breaking 67 years.

Yank Rachell had a not insignificant influence on other musicians. BB King is said to have told him. " People like you made ​​it all possible people like me " One of the songs from Rachell, which were later taken up by other musicians, among other Loudella Blues ( a hit for Jimmy Rogers ) and Gravel Road Woman ( from the blind Boy Fuller I Do not Want No Skinny Woman made ​​). And the Divin 'Duck Blues is considered blues classics first order.

Bibliography

• Richard Congress: Blues Mandolin Man: The Life And Music Of Yank Rachell.

Discography

• Yank Rachell (1964 )
• Chicago Style
• Mandolin Blues
• Blues Mandolin Man (1986 )
• Pig Trader Blues ( 1995) ( with David Morgan )
• Too Hot For The Devil ( 1996) ( with Allen Statyner and Pat Webb)
• James " Yank " Rachell, Volume 1 and 2