I just came across this clip--I'd forgotten it was floating out there--and thought it was worth sharing. This was filmed by my cousin Ethan some time in 1989, either very early in the year or very late. The scene you see, with me on the left and Sterling on the right, Sterling in a great mood, banging away on his percussion and playing his own distinctive rhythm-and-lead guitar stylings....all of that was my regular "given," my gig, for three or four years, between the fall of 1986 and the fall of 1990.
The clip gives you a good sense of who our daily audience was. All black, all men, almost all of them older. Plus whoever was strolling by.
For those of you who pay attention to such things, you'll notice that I was hitting the 6 overblow with some regularity. Overblows were much less common among blues players in 1989 than they are now!
I've still got that same Mouse, the one on the right. It's the one I brought to Shared Harvest Farm a couple of weeks ago. I bought it in late 1986, after the one I'd used to busk over in Europe in the summer of '86 was stolen out of my car in the South Bronx, right after I started jamming with Sterling on the streets. The King Biscuit Time bumper sticker is one that I bought in Helena in May 1988 when I drove home to NYC from Texas by way of Arkansas and Mississippi.
We're playing directly across the street from the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building. It's hard to find the spot, because the facing of the wall behind us has been changed, but it is, I believe, now the rightmost portion of the wall for the Studio Museum in Harlem, which has been expanded westward since those days.
I certainly wouldn't be doing what I'm doing these days as an improviser if I hadn't had the chance to play hundreds of hours of solos and backing during that period.
The documentary, BTW, is moving ahead swiftly. Scott, the filmmaker, is stopping by Oxford this Sunday to do one last final bit of wrap up. He'll be interviewing Harry Shearer and Quint Davis (founder of the NOLA Jazz & Heritage Festival) tomorrow and stopping by Sterling's Mount Olive, Mississippi hometown on Saturday. He's got some big funders on board. I'm sure there will be big news within the next few months.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jul 06, 2017 4:19 AM
Just a thought. The spot where Mr. McGee played for all those early years in NYC. A plaque of some sort should be affixed to where he played in his honor.
So what attracts me is his sense of rhythm…… he is clearly playing a shuffle…. still it swings.
He does not appear to have any drums. Two high hats with a tambourine on top? Notice how relaxed it feels ? … it grooves…. It is not forced….. Kind of sexual.
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