Todays Featured Blues Artist: Todays Featured Blues Artist - Yank Rachell

Todays Featured Blues Artist: Todays Featured Blues Artist - Yank Rachell

James "Yank" Rachell (March 16, 1910 – April 9, 1997) was an American country blues musician, dubbed an "elder statesman of the blues."

Born James Rachell, his career as a performer spanned nearly seventy years, and was often teamed with the guitarist and singer Sleepy John Estes. He grew up in Brownsville, Tennessee, but in 1958 moved north to Indianapolis during the American folk music revival. He recorded for Delmark Records and Blue Goose Records. Though a capable guitarist and singer, he was better known as a master of the blues mandolin; he had bought his first mandolin at age 8, with a pig his family had given him to raise. "She Caught the Katy," which he wrote with Taj Mahal, is considered a blues standard.

In his later years he appeared in filmmaker Terry Zwigoff's documentary about fellow musician Howard Armstrong, and was a featured performer with John Sebastian and the J-Band.

By the mid 1990s, Henry Townsend and his one-time collaborator Rachell were the only active blues artists whose performing lives stretched back to the 1920s. In later years he suffered from arthritis which shortened his playing sessions, though he still recorded an album just before his death,  'Too Hot For the Devil'.


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James "Yank" Rachell

Bio Source...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yank_Rachell

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Rare historical photo from Mike Butler
 

Left to right it is

Yank Rachell - Mississippi John Hurt - Skip James -

Elizabeth Cotten - Doc Reese - Sleepy John Estes:

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Here is a photo of Yank playing a Flatiron mandolin given to him by John Sebastian. See the story below the photo:

Yank said, "We (Yank and Sebastian) went to Memphis and played there at the W. C. Handy Awards. Yeah. Then he bought me a mandolin, paid sixteen hundred dollars for it, and gave it to me. I appreciated it. I needed it. John Sebastian like to play with me. He come down here a lot of times. He came here in April and we went to Memphis last time. Carry us down there to my hometown, Brownsville. Got me a room in the Peabody Hotel. So John Sebastian paid for all of that. Nice fella. He play harmonica, banjo, and guitar."

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Yank's "#1" mandolin, now owned by his good friend Mike Butler.

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The Tennesse Jug Busters:
Hammie Nixon, Sleepy John Estes, Michael Bloomfield and Yank Rachell:


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 James "Yank" Rachell drawing


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"Yank" with his Harmony mandolin . . .

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James "Yank" Rachell (1910 - 1997)
buried in Indianapolis, Indiana

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Until next time, "Remember to Keep Your Boogie On".

MUSICIAN by Night

"Help Keep The Blues Alive"