Back Road Blues

About Andy Cohen

ANDY COHEN IS A VIRTUOSO FINGER-STYLE GUITARIST WHO HAS been described as “a walking, talking folk-blues-roots music encyclopedia.” He grew up in a home with a piano and lots of Dixieland Jazz records. During the Sixties Folk Revival, he got hooked on the music of Big Bill Broonzy and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. When Andy was 16, he heard South Carolina’s Rev. Gary Davis perform and the effect on him was profound. He has devoted his life to studying, performing, and promoting traditional blues and folk music of the pre-World War II era.

Andy toured with Martin, Bogan and Armstrong, John Jackson, Rev. Gary Davis, Brother Daniel Womack, Rev. Dan Smith, Jim Brewer, and Honeyboy Edwards. He also worked extensively with Walt and Ethel Phelps, Big Joe Duskin, Pigmeat Jarrett, Etta Baker, Big Boy Henry, and Son Thomas.

Andy has helped to support a number of his mentors and younger players, by organizing festivals and other venues for them to play in. He has written about several of the old masters and studied their work in a systematic way. Many of his students are now professional touring musicians.

The Country Blues says, “One thing is for sure, the boy can play. There are few people around today who had a chance to pick it all up from the old generations, get this good at it and continue to cherish and preserve the old traditions.”

He has been assiduous in sharing his expertise in classes, camps, and anywhere people are making music. Andy Cohen has more than a dozen recordings to his credit, including Oh Glory, How Happy I Am: The Sacred Songs of Rev. Gary Davis and Andrew M. Cohen: Dolceola Favorites.

An enthusiastic proponent of the dolceola, Andy says he “never leaves home without it.” Described by some as a “miniature piano,” the dolceola has a keyboard, but the strings are struck with wooden mallets. Along the way, Andy earned a Master’s Degree in anthropology. His passions come together in his essay on “The Hands of Blues Guitarists,” published in Ramblin’ On My Mind: New Perspectives On the Blues, edited by David Evans (2008).

These blog-interviews by Michael Limnios are outstanding in-depth conversations with Andy Cohen about his work in music. Read here and here.

“An Andy Cohen performance encompasses the well-known, the obscure and the weirdly wonderful, and will definitely include a visit from the dolceola along with acoustic 6 and 12-string guitars.”  —JOHN BOTTOMLEY • BluesInTheNorthwest.com

A great radio interview with Andy by Monica Sandreczki on NCPR’s Oct. 12, 2021, “Northern Light” show (Listen from 19:02 to 29:34).

About William Lee Ellis

Acclaimed roots music artist William Lee Ellis is a fingerpicking stylist and songwriter versed in acoustic blues and gospel guitar styles, notably the music of Rev. Gary Davis. His latest album,  Ghost Hymns, is a Blues Music Awards nominee for Acoustic Blues Album of the Year and has been hailed as one of 2023’s best by  Downbeat  and  Blues Music  magazines, among other publications.

William Lee Ellis is the son of banjo composer Tony Ellis and godson of bluegrass patriarch Bill Monroe. An acoustic blues musician and writer by profession, Bill has a PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Memphis and a Master of Music from the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music. He spent nine years as the pop music critic for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and he is currently a professor teaching History of Pop Music, World Music, and music theory and is Chair of Fine Arts at Saint Michael’s College. www.williamleeellis.com

About Eleanor Ellis

ELEANOR ELLIS, a native of Louisiana, has performed at clubs, festivals and concerts in the United States, Canada and Europe. She has also traveled and played with the late gospel street singer Flora Molton and bluesman Archie Edwards, and sometimes accompanied Delta Blues great Eugene Powell. She is a founding member of the DC Blues Society and the Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation, has written about the blues for several publications, and is producer and editor of the video documentary Blues Houseparty, which features well-known Piedmont blues musicians such as John Jackson, John Cephas, and Archie Edwards. She also worked at the Archive of New Orleans Jazz at Tulane University in New Orleans, and at the New Orleans Jazz Museum.

Her recordings include Comin’ a Time on the Patuxent label, Backyard Blues, a CD of solo blues guitar and vocals; Preaching in That Wilderness on the Riverlark label with Bill Ellis and Andy Cohen; appearances on several anthologies, including the 25th Anniversary Kent State Folk Festival collection, Sisterfire: Music by Women, and Archie’s Barbershop Blues, released by the Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation; and two recordings with Flora Molton, I Want to Be Ready to Hear God When He Calls, on Mrs. Molton’s own Lively Stone label, and Flora Molton, recorded for Radio France.

Not long after arriving in the D.C. area in 1976, Eleanor Ellis was befriended and mentored by the great local players John Jackson, John Cephas, Phil Wiggins and Archie Edwards. Back then, the African American acoustic blues of Washington, D.C., was based in and around Archie’s original famous barbershop. Eleanor and gospel street-musician Flora Molton were the first women to be fully embraced by this vibrant local acoustic blues scene. It is a testament to the openness and inclusiveness of the D.C. musical elders to embrace a young white Southern woman with a thick Louisiana dialect as one of their own. There was and is something special in the regional D.C. blues and it comes back to the personalities of the old masters. By now, the brilliant chanteuse has been an important member of the D.C. roots & blues community for nearly 50 years.

The elders left us, one by one, and Eleanor carried on. The harmonica ace Phil Wiggins was her frequent musical partner after John Cephas died. He frequently told this writer how much he adored Eleanor and how he totally loved playing with her. As we just lost the great Phil Wiggins, hearing his fascinating duets on this album with Eleanor warm the heart. Now that Phil has also passed, Eleanor is the elder carrying on the tradition, along with friends like Neil Harpe, who is also featured on this album.

As you will hear, Eleanor Ellis is an unparalleled interpreter of traditional songs who sourced her voices and rhythms to her acoustic blues predecessors. The word “legendary” is thrown around excessively nowadays, but here is a folk-roots artist who truly deserves that adjective. Eleanor Ellis is indeed a legendary acoustic blues picker, one of the finest living performers in the genre.  There are very few authentic voices with this fluid command of alternating bass fingerpicking styles. She plays with a natural elegance, a swift fluency, always reflecting a sense of beauty in the music, expressive with feeling. Eleanor sings with a rich, strong voice coupled with exquisite, refined guitar picking, and a wide-ranging song repertoire of the regional blues traditions. She brings you to a temporal interim where only music can take you. A proud, joyous, beautiful place.

—from Frank Matheis, Publisher and Editor thecountryblues.com

Artist Review: Eleanor Ellis