Blues Before Sunrise: The Radio Interviews

Yank Rachell

Yank rachell the mandolin is a rare instrument in the world of blues. throughout the entire history of this music there have been only a handful of blues mandolinists of note.Yank rachell and Charlie McCoy were the preeminent mandolinists during the prewar years, and JohnnyYoung was the lone postwar blues mandolinist.the mandolin remains popular in bluegrass and old-timey music, but has reached a virtual dead end in blues. Pete Crawford made this interview with blues mandolinist Yank rachell possible. Pete had formed one of those symbiotic relationships that many aspiring young white players had with veteran black bluesmen in the early 1960s, a tradition that continues to this day.Yank taught Pete how to play guitar in accompaniment to his mandolin and hired him to play gigs and recording sessions as his accompanist. Pete, in turn, hustled club and festival gigs and provided reliable transportation .the two worked together for many years. I don’t recall if I approached Pete or if Pete approached me, but he arranged the interview and then drove me down toYank’s house in Indianapolis, a four-hour drive from Chicago. yank rachell (back) with Sleepy John estes. Photo courtesy ofyank rachell. As I recall, there were a couple of problems in doing this particular interview . First, when we set up the recording equipment inYank’s living room, his young grandson sat in. He was about six years old and didn’t seem to understand that he couldn’t sing or speak while we were recording. It didn’t takeYank long to shag him out of the room, since he wouldn’t be quiet, but try as we might we couldn’t get rid of him.there were more doors in that room than on an advent calendar, and this kid popped through each one of them. every time the kid reappeared, we would stop recording whileYank scolded him out of the room.this went on for most of the first hour. Another difficulty for me was thatYank spoke with a unique dialect. I usually had no problem understanding what was said when black musicians spoke, having spent a decade on Chicago’s South and west sides. Yank, however, had a very high-pitched, very nasal, rapid-fire manner of speaking . During this session I had a hard time following the conversation. I can be grateful thatYank was a natural storyteller—and that Pete, having heard his stories for many years, requestedYank’s best anecdotes. this interview took place on September 27, 1984. Yank rachell died on April 9, 1997. ■ ■ ■ Well, I was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, way out in the country, you know. My daddy was a farmer. He got this farm, raised cotton and corn. So I didn’t know nothing else but that. When I got larger, I heard about the city. “Daddy, let’s move to the city.” He said, “I ain’t eating them wasps nests.” He called light bread “wasps nests.” Say, “I ain’t eating them wasps nests, no light bread.” Daddy said, “I’m gonna stay here and raise me some corn. Then I’d have some meal and eat some cornbread. And raise me some sow bosom.” Talking about a hog. All right. Well, we stayed there. Planted cotton and corn and sorghum. All that junk, you know. So we used to have an old radio with a horn on it. You’d hear them talk. When we didn’t have one, we’d go to people’s house and listen to it. So we decided we wanted to play some music. I did—me and my brothers—the three of us. So my brothers and I met some girls, schoolgirls. We wasn’t trying to court them. We were too young trying to court them. But they had a guitar. They would lend it to us. And we’d go home and try to play. We couldn’t play nothing, but we had an uncle, he could play. And I had a cousin, he could play. So my uncle, he lived in the city, and he’d come out in the country on a weekend. And he’d 4 ancient age teach us how to play something on the guitar. Well, we three learned how to play the guitar. Well, my older brother, he passed away. That left me and the baby boy. So I was going down the road...