Page 82 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2019

Living Legend:

Beverly

“Guitar”

Watkins

By Jed Finley

Beverly “Guitar” Watkins. Photo by Tim Duffy

Though she has captured the rapt attention of audiences across she was introduced to Piano Red, with whom she later toured
the U.S. since the 1950s, the story of Beverly “Guitar” Watkins, the during the 1950s and '60s as a part of Piano Red and the Meter-
80-year-old guitar-slinging grandma, actually begins in the early tones (later also known as Piano Red & the Interns, Dr. Feelgood
1920s when a nationwide “blues craze” swept across the African & the Interns, and The Interns & the Nurse). It was as a guitar
American community. When we talk about the blues, usually we player with Doctor Feelgood & the Interns that Beverly cut her
talk about bluesmen: electric guitar slingers, acoustic pickers, harp- teeth, honing her guitar skills by playing powerful solos with the
blowers and the list goes on. But blueswomen have numbered instrument hoisted behind her head or suspended like a machine
among the ranks of blues greats since the very first proper blues gun between her knees.
song, “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith. The band carried on in various forms through the mid-1970s.
“Crazy Blues” was the first popular “race record,” a turn-of- After it broke up, Beverly was forced to take on various odd jobs
the-20 -century designation for any music recorded for African to supplement her income: “I worked at car washes, I worked at
th
American audiences. For a long time, however, the blues weren’t office buildings, I cleaned people’s houses,” Watkins says, but, “I
just segregated, they were also divided by gender. There were never did let my music go. I always found somewhere that I could
urban blues, which were sung by women in a kind of jazzier style go out and play.”
in the tradition of vaudeville, and there were downhome blues, After working multiple jobs for years, Watkins joined the
acoustic blues performed by men, accompanying themselves on Atlanta-based group Leroy Redding & the Houserockers until
acoustic guitar.
In the 1950s, these racial and gendered fissures in the blues
music scene began to crack. Artists like Big Mama Thornton and
Sister Rosetta Tharpe broke down these barriers, performing more
masculine styles for more white audiences. These women, like
Mamie Smith before them, paved the way for Beverly “Guitar”
Watkins and a whole new generation of women in blues.
Born in 1939 in Atlanta, GA, Beverly’s affinity for music was
in her blood, in her bones. Her grandfather, Luke Hayes, was a
proficient banjo picker, while her aunts sang in the Hayes Family
quartet. Family gatherings were a time for playing and sharing
music. As a sophomore at Archer High School in Atlanta, Beverly
studied with Count Basie’s trumpeter, Clark Terry, who purchased
her first real guitar for her and taught her the fundamentals of Beverly in Piano Red’s band, Dr. Feelgood & the Interns.
playing. However, Beverly’s musical education truly began when Photo from booklet "Piano Red, Dr. Feelgood," by Norbert Hess

80 Blues Festival Guide 2019