![]() ![]() ![]() He was no globetrotting entertainer with the exception of a few weeks of touring here and there and a two-year stay in Houston, Lipscomb did most of his influencing from the little town of Navasota, where he lived with his wife and extended family until his death in 1976.Īlyn sampled the bluesman's lifestyle for five years, living and performing where he could in Lipscomb's Navasota "precinct." He spent countless hours with Lipscomb, who by 1974 had taken ill, talking about Lipscomb's life and myth, and how the two often intertwined. Lipscomb had a stunningly diverse repertoire of styles that embraced everything from field shouts to children's songs to Broadway tunes to spirituals, though he never neglected his signature loyalty to the blues. Lipscomb played a number of folk and blues festivals throughout the '60s, inspiring Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal (who wrote the forward to Alyn's book), Janis Joplin, Pete Seeger and a multitude of others. Like many of the greats, Lipscomb wandered into his fabled reputation quite by accident, discovered - more or less - in 1960 when Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz tracked him down in Texas to record a handful of songs. That life changed significantly when, during the '60s blues revival, Lipscomb found himself immersed in sudden celebrity. Talking to Alyn, you get the impression that he wishes he'd lived Lipscomb's life himself - tenant farming for next to nothing, worshipping the licks of his hero, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and surviving the best he could playing his finger-style, flat-picking brand of guitar on the side for spare change. I thought, 'There's got to be more than one person playing that guitar.' Meeting Mance, I found out that his music was only the tip of the iceberg." "I was one of the new folk performers, and Mance was on the main stage," Alyn recalls. ![]() He'll also be around Saturday afternoon for a book signing at the Bookstop on Shepherd and a CD signing at Cactus Music next door.Īlyn first met Lipscomb while performing at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 1972. Alyn brings Lipscomb's story to town this week for a performance Friday at McGonigel's Mucky Duck sponsored by the Houston Blues Society, and a lecture earlier in the day at the University of Houston. Alyn, a Lago Vista-based musician and writer, is author of the critically acclaimed I Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman, an engrossing, richly detailed, tell-it-like-it-is account peppered with its subject's occasionally perplexing East Texas vernacular. But looking back, he figures it was well worth it, considering what that man - Texas blues legend Mance Lipscomb - did for him and countless others. Glen Alyn made a hefty sacrifice setting aside a chunk of his life for one man. ![]()
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