Andy Cohen, Eleanor Ellis and William Lee Ellis – three all well-established roots, blues and folk artists have been performing together for more than 30 years. The trio will bring traditional, original and select covers, as well as songs from their new album Whistlin’ Past The Graveyard, to Caffe Lena on Thursday March 26, part of the Folk Heritage Series.
Eleanor Ellis, William Lee Ellis, and Andy Cohen are three remarkable acoustic blues guitarists who are part of a generation that learned directly from the original blues players. These are musicians who spent time in the homes of people like Rev. Gary Davis, Honeyboy Edwards, and Flora Molton, learning the music person to person rather than from recordings or books.
For fans of acoustic blues, it just doesn’t get any better than this. Three towering talents take us on a rollicking tour through the Delta, the Piedmont, and the Paramount record catalog of the ’20s and ’30s, and pieces learned first-hand in the homes of the creators themselves.
Eleanor Ellis is a celebrated master of country and Piedmont blues–one of the most significant women in the acoustic blues genre. She is a torchbearer especially for her friend, mentor and musical partner, blues & gospel singer and guitarist Flora Molton, with whom she recorded two albums: I Want to Be Ready to Hear God When He Calls and the eponymous Flora Molton, recorded for Radio France.
Acclaimed Americana/Blues guitarist William Lee Ellis was named after his godfather, legendary bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe. His father, Tony Ellis, was one of Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. After earning a master’s degree in classical guitar performance, Ellis met Piedmont blues giant Reverend Gary Davis. “Davis was a great sacred bluesman…There’s a combination of the heavenly and the hellish, there are wonderful dynamics, tension and drama.” In his quest to make the music’s message live for today, Ellis has developed a style of Americana all his own.
Blues picker and Caffe Lena stalwart Andy Cohen – a familiar face at Lena—has long been known as a walking encyclopedia of American roots music – is a connector between the legendary bluesmen of the last century (Big Bill Broonzy, Rev. Gary Davis, Honeyboy Edwards) and today’s generation of blues revivalists. As a youngster coming up in the ’60s folk revival, Andy began the explorations with “source” musicians that led to his current status as a virtuoso fingerstyle guitarist. An Andy Cohen performance encompasses the well-known, the obscure and the weirdly wonderful, and often involves autoharp and dolceola along with acoustic 6 and 12-string guitars.
This generation of blues artists is getting smaller, having lost Roy Book Binder in early March and Joe Louis Walker last year. These musicians signify the last direct link to a lot of that early acoustic blues tradition.
Get tickets for the Caffe Lena Folk Heritage Series here.
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