Bowling Green John Cephas and Harmonica Phil Wiggins: D.C. Country Blues
by Dr. Barry Lee Pearson
John Cephas and Phil Wiggins currently work together as a duet reminiscent of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Yet they have their own unique style – an infectious blend of country instrumentation and expressive, sophisticated vocals. Their exciting brand of country blues draws heavily on traditional materials and has won them the respect of folklorists and festival promoters as well as East Coast audiences. As their reputation grows, they are traveling more and more throughout the country and overseas. If you want to book them, write Barry Lee Pearson, English department, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742. The following interview has been pieced together from various interviews conducted by author, Cheryl Brauner, and Susan Day.
JOHN CEPHAS: I was born here in Washington, D.C. , back in 1903, and I’ve lived here in Washington and in Virginia off and on all my life. I’m presently living in Virginia around a place called Woodford, Virginia, which is very close to Bowling Green, Virginia, which is our county seat. I was raised like here and there – most all my people are from that area – and I still have a lot of kinfolk there and that’s really where my roots were. That’s where I settled too, you know, that’s where my home was, really. That’s where I live now.
My earliest beginnings, well for singing – the voice to sing – I was brought up in the church. My mother used to go to church and she would have us up in the church singing. Most of the time we would play in church. My brother and I were a duet. We sang with no accompaniment. My mother, she brought us up, she would rehearse us during the week and on Sunday she’d take us to church. My brother and I would sing in church but I never got any money for that.
We used to have these windup Victrolas and we’d have records we listened to blues and spirituals – well, Gary Davis, Rosetta Tharpe. I started singing spirituals but I wasn’t playing guitar in church, just singing. I guess that was when I was having instilled in me that black person’s way of singing with soul, you know. Of course the blues and spirituals, if you listen to them are so closely related, well, automatic you could sign the blues and the only other thing you needed was to learn to play the guitar to accompany yourself.
If you listen closely to blues and gospel music you’ll see the music is just about the same, the chords are the same, the progressions the same: only the words are different. In gospel you sing about your feelings about God, whereas in the blues you sing about your feelings about your girl done you wrong, your job, your hardships.
How did your parents feel about the blues?
Well, my father, he’s a Baptist minister, and my whole family, my mother and my father have been very active in the church and consequently I was brought up in the church myself.
I used to keep that kind of secret because of the type of music I wanted to play – but like I said, my mother had us in church all the time, but I was leaning toward the blues so I had to kind of keep that hid for a long time. See, ‘cause they didn’t want the young people playing the blues because they were ‘round the houses where people were drinking and, you know, where they had thee fly women and places like that. They’d try to lead us away from that and lean us more toward religion, but you know, I was more impressed by the blues. They used to say it was the “devil’s music” and even today, my mother’s still living now and she always asks me that I should give some time to the church and stop singing blues. She still says that, you know.
Did they try to stop you from playing blues?
I don’t think they had any bad feelings about me playing the blues or wanting to play blues. I don’t feel they were against that, but going into places like speak-easies, bars and restaurants and houses of ill repute, you know, I was always warned about places like that.
How did you get interested in the guitar?
At a very early age I was kind of attracted to string music. Throughout the country they used to have quite a few of the old-time blues guitar players. And on the weekends they would come around, you know, and they would have like weekend parties. Or just come around to visit you in your home or something, and they would bring their guitars and they’d play music. And I was very, very young.
I was more or less attracted to the blues, you know, because that’s what most everybody around was – that could play the guitar – was playing. They were playing the blues, and that’s what I was interested in (chuckles) in knowing how to play the blues, you know. Yeah, so some spirituals, like during that time, there were a lot of guitar players that would play the blues and then they would sing spirituals also. But it was mainly blues, you know, that’s what really got to me. Yeah, the blues, I just wanted to play the blues.
When did you first hear the blues?
The very first blues music I heard, my Aunt Lillian had a boyfriend and his name was Haley Dorsey. And he used to go around from house to house and he was very good at playing the guitar. And he used to spend a lot of time with my aunt and every time he would come around he would bring his guitar. And I was just a little tot but I would love the sound of what he was doing and he later showed me a few chords on the guitar. He was living in Washington at that time because he used to come around quite often and he was a real good blues guitar player. And I was just attracted to that sound, that blues, you know, when I was young. And my Aunt Lillian, she was a sort of a guitar player herself, so I used to sit and listen to that – her and Haley playing – and sometimes, in her spare time she would show me a few chords, you know, when I was real young. She’d show me a few chords on the guitar, and, I guess that’s when I started off. I must have been eight (chuckles), nine years old, or something like that.
You said your father played guitar. Did you learn from him?
No. No. Uh, my father . . . you know this is the kind of story that I tell a lot. This is a very true story. When my father first bought a beautiful he was an adult man and he was kind of fascinated with a guitar and he had aspirations of playing the guitar, of being a blues musician.
So at that time, I had already been exposed to the blues. I was actually playing a little bit of open key stuff and slide that he didn’t know anything about. So he went out and bought himself a guitar. I didn’t have a guitar. He went out and bought himself a guitar and he used to hide his guitar in the closet. And he would not allow me to play his guitar, wouldn’t allow me to touch it.
Well, when he wasn’t home I would go and get his guitar and I would play his guitar. And almost every time, he would catch me. He would come home and catch me and I got many a licking because of his guitar.
And finally, he never did learn how to play the guitar. So when he just finally got disgusted with his efforts to play the guitar he just told me, he say, “Well, you – I can’t stop you.” He said, “There’s the guitar if you want to play it, there it is.” Said “You can have it, you can play it.” So then I was kind of home free with the guitar then, and that really gave me a chance to play it as much as I wanted after he almost killed me trying to keep me from playing it.
I got many a thrashing over that guitar, you know. So, off and on; you know, like I had a lot of kinfolk around that had guitars. I might go to somebody’s house, you know, I played guitar there, or take my father’s guitar (chuckles), and I would play that.
When I was coming up and playing, it was more like a home type of thing. We would go from house to house and play, not into clubs or place like that, you know. We had nothing much else to do on the weekends, after a hard week’s work. Everybody –they would gather around different family members’ and friends’ houses and we played guitars and whatever other instruments we’d have. And we’d all get together and drink corn liquor and play guitars and have a real good time, you know, like a country breakdown, we used to call them country breakdowns . . . We used to travel around together when I got a little older on that house-to-house circuit, playing for house parties or just ‘bout any affair. It was like a community type of thing. It wouldn’t necessarily be a gig – you know, if somebody be having a party or you would sit around and have a few drinks . . . . You kind of have to understand, music was a kind of outlet for black folk and a lot of people couldn’t play, but they enjoyed the music. And weekends, well, during these early days we didn’t have no money to really go no place, and a lot of places we couldn’t go at all because we were black. So this was an outlet for us. This was something enjoyable that we used to do and we really had a good time.
And I used to play around the house. Play for myself, or my friends, I’d play for them. But nothing like stage playing or nothing like that. And maybe somebody was having a party on Saturday night, you know, and they would invite me. Say, “Bring your corn liquor and homebrew” and juts have a good time, you know. It’s just mainly throughout around in the country and for parties and things like that. It was nothing really formal and no money involved, you know. I played for years with nothing, you know. Yeah, well, I guess I was playing then because I liked to play and because I wanted to play because I enjoy the music myself.
I guess I never lost that desire or urge to want to play it. As I grew older I picked up a little here and a little there, mostly the blues. Well, that’s all, back in my younger days, most black folks were playing, you know – the blues. As I grew up I met other guitar players and like I would go out, we used to go out to those country hops or Saturday night breakdowns, you know. We’d all get around on the weekend and we’d play the guitar and some guys maybe banjos and violins and what have you, you know, and I learned a lot then. I had a cousin, he’s deceased now, his name was David Talliafero. He was from Caroline County, Virginia, and I think he was probably the best guitar player in that area or anywhere in Virginia, and he taught me, oh, well, I could say probably 80 percent of what I know on the guitar and as I grew older I played more. I learned a lot more songs, you know, and I wasn’t really attracted to like the rhythm &blues type of music. I was just stuck mainly with the old folk country blues, you know. We had records, we used to play them on those Victrolas, the kind you used to wind up and we had like Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Lemon Jefferson, Reverend Gary Davis, you know, and that’s the style of music I play now.
As I grew up, I continued to play and I played mainly for house parties or maybe someone had a wedding or something around through the country or even here in D.C.
Have you ever played in any real rough places?
Back in the country, I’ve played where things got quite rough. At house parties, you know, everybody got steamed up drinking that corn liquor and some would start fighting. I’ve been to some free-for-alls back in the country where everybody would be fighting, nobody know who’s fighting who. Breaking all the windows out, tearing the doors down, I’ve ben to quite a few of those. (Laughs.)
And for awhile there, I stopped playing guitar. I guess I stopped playing for maybe four or five years. I didn’t do much playing. I was getting up in my late twenties. I was trying to raise a family and I didn’t have time to spend playing the guitar. But like when I go to the country, I’d sit down and maybe play a little bit here but nothing really extensive. Then one night I went out to a birthday party. A friend had the birthday party and she asked me would I bring my guitar along with me. I wasn’t really with it, you know, ‘cause I was kinda rusty. I hadn’t played for a long time, and I went to the party an di carried the guitar along with me. And while I was at this party I was trying to play some of the old blues and everybody was just sitting around. I don’t guess I was doing very good, you know. It didn’t seem like no one was really affected, just sitting there, and I was playing kinda uneasy. And there was a gentleman sitting there and he commented to me, he said, “Man, you play real nice blues guitar, you know.” I thanked him and all, so in the course of the conversation he told me that he played piano. He asked would I like to play with him sometime. I told him I didn’t mind, well, we exchanged phone numbers and everything. That same evening the host of the party said she had a piano in her basement and asked us if we wanted to play a little together, that we could go down in the basement. At that time I didn’t know I was talking to Big Chief Ellis. (Laughs) I had heard some of his recordings he had made but his name was kinda obscure to me, although I knew I’d heard of him before. And we went downstairs, and we started playing, and I think we played until six o’clock the next morning, he playing the piano and I on the guitar. So then after this meeting, I started to go over to his house, and we sat down, and we had a lot of rehearsals, and we practiced together a lot. Then we started going out on shows together, just he and I. right from then, things started to happen to me. We got a lot of calls and started playing at universities, and really I was unaware that people really got interested in that blues type of music when I was playing that black man’s country folks’ music. Course, I’d never played really for money until I had met Big Chief Ellis, you know.
What was it like playing with Big Chief Ellis?
Uh (chuckles), it was real great. Big Chief, he’s play that old barrelhouse type of piano. I’ll tell you it really went good along with that blues guitar. Yeah, it was real great. We really had good times (laughs) and a good sound, let me tell you. Chief could really play.
I think the barrelhouse piano playing, it’s unique ‘cause very few people can do it and he makes the piano roll, you know, when he plays. It really sounded good and the blues type of guitar that I played, it sounded really good with that type of piano playing. So we started getting numerous calls, universities and folk festivals, and that’s really the first time I was exposed to the folk festival circuit, you know. I was very unaware that they were interested in the type of music we were playing. Since that time, we had a lot of engagements. ‘Course, Big Chief, he’s deceased now. But since then I have been really active in playing. Numerous calls to come play places and I’ve also joined the Traveling Blues Workshop with the members John Jackson, Mother Scott, Flora Molton, Archie Edwards, myself and Phil Wiggins.
Big Chief – we formed a group, well, we started off together. We were playing I think either Wolf Trap [National Folk Festival] or the American Folklife Festival and we met a young harmonica player. His name was Phil Wiggins. We were sitting around waiting for our time to perform and Phil started playing his harmonica with us and he had such a beautiful sound, you know, that blues harmonica. So we asked Phil if he wanted to come with us and lay with us, so we started having rehearsals. Then to improve our sound, we thought that we needed a drummer or a bass, so we finally got in touch with a fellow named James Bellamy, and he played electric bass. Then there was four of us. We played a couple of years together while Chief was living. Since Chief died, Phil Wiggins and I continued playing and we still play together.
I know a lot of blues musicians have made it successfully, you know, on television and traveling around the world; but I’ve never had the opportunity or was where it would profit me to go into it full time.
I’m a carpenter, and playing music is like a hobby to me. Now since I’ve been playing regularly, it’s more like a profession really, but my main job is carpentry and blues comes next to that. But I wish that I could be supported by my blues playing and give up carpentry. If I could do that, I would give up carpentry and play blues all the time.
Any regrets you have about being a blues musician?
No. I just wish I could play more and, and play more and get paid more (laughs). Yeah, play more and get paid more but I guess that’s kind of true for a lot of musicians – the hometown boys don’t really get rewarded. But now, if we were on the road and we played different places we could probably really be compensated for our time, and for what we are able to do. But not here in the town, in your hometown.
But, I’ve never regretted being a blues music, it’s like a part of my life. It’s something I’ve wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to be a good blues musician. I play for audiences, you know, but I think I enjoy the music more than they do. I just love it, it’s something I love to do.
You’ve been on tour recently?
Yeah, we were in Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival European tour last March and we go over again in October and then maybe on to Africa. I just got back from Seattle, you know. But I’m interested in going all over, I’d travel nationwide if the opportunity presented itself – so our music can be heard by more people so they can be exposed to us.
That’s why I like to play the folk festivals, you know. The crowds are larger, and, I don’t know, you’re putting your wares on display for more people, and stuff like that. I like the folk festivals.
Sometimes on some of the performances we go on, we’ll have like a workshop in between shows maybe, and students will come up and ask us, will you show me some things? They’ll bring their guitar and sit down and play with me.
See, my style is a little different from most common modern guitar players. I play like with finger-thumb, actually I can play them all at one time. And it’s awful hard to teach anybody that. It’s something that you just practice and one day you stumble upon it, and you’ve got it, you know. It’s kind of hard to teach guys, but I’ve tried to show a lot of guys. Some of them get it, some of them don’t. I guess you’ve just got to have that natural ability for that style of playing. And most of the older guys played like that. They didn’t play with flatpicks, you know. They played with all their fingers. Yeah, so, that’s the way I learned. Like the guys around through the country. I had a cousin down there, David Talliafero, he was as good a guitar player as anyone ever played a guitar in this whole country. He was, he was that good.
He taught me most of the chords that I know and how to lay the thumb and finger style like the Piedmont players do. That three-finger style of picking. I used to sit down for hours on end, just singing and playing to myself, just trying to get that, well, we called it that “Williamsburg lope,” you know, to get the guitar to say what you want it to say while keeping that rhythm behind it. It took me a long time to get that, but I think once I got that I started feeling really comfortable with the guitar. I could sit down and play what I wanted to play, and it sounded like I wanted it to sound, and that’s been some years back.
I think that when I first discovered that I had it, that style, I wanna tell you that I think that was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. I think I went out and got plastered (laughs). That was an experience, you know. I used to listen to Blind Boy Fuller, how he used to hit those notes. What he was doing I couldn’t do it, you know, and finally once I learned that style, how he was playing like that, then I had it, you know. It was a very good feeling.
It’s improvisation, I play it like however I feel I should play it. I stick to the general tune but I play it like I feel. It’s kinda hard when you listen to a record to get those licks down like the guy who’d be playing them, so you just put a little in of your own.
Blues is a thing you’ve got to feel it in order to pay it. You can’t play it if you don’t feel it. It’s got to be like a part of you, you know. (laughs) See, a blues is expression of yourself or your mind, your inner self, you know. It’s a part of you and you actually got to be able to feel them blues before you can play them.
Do you play any other instruments?
Since I’ve been out in the world entertaining, I’ve taken up another hobby, playing the pedal steel guitar. I’ve always been fascinated by that sound. It’s not really an old instrument like the lap steel. It’s sort of more recent but I’ve always been fascinated by the sound. Oh, about two or three years ago, I bought one and I studied under a fellow from Nashville. Well, he’s from Virginia but he played for years in Nashville with Ernest Tubb. I studied with him for about two year, ‘course I haven’t played this out on the stage. It’s another hobby of mine, though.
Have you adapted it to blues?
No, not really. I’m not that far advanced on it. Pedal steel guitar is a unique instrument. I think it’s one of the hardest to play. I tried to play trumpet, violin and banjo when I was younger, you know, but I never attempted to play anything as hard as the steel guitar. I haven’t adapted it to blues. I can play some blues numbers on it, but it don’t really sound like the real blues, you know. My instructor, Bud Charlton, well, I’m studying with him now but he could play it like the old country blues, yeah, he sure could.
Do you play slide guitar?
Yeah, I have played slide but since I’ve played on stage in front of audiences I really haven’t attempted to do that. Like I said, maybe for about four or five years I didn’t play the guitar and I lost some of it, but we used to play with a bottleneck, or a knife, you know. We used to turn a guitar down flat and play it like that, and I don’t even think I could do it now. It would take some time. That’s a style all in itself. So I just stick to what mainly I known how to do best.
What kind of changes have you seen the blues go through?
When I first started playing, the blues was very popular in but mostly with the black folk, you know. But then for a time, the types of blues I play – the old fashioned blues – it kind of died out among black people, you know, because some of the younger people were coming up and they was playing more hip songs, so to speak, jumping songs, like upbeat stuff, and rock ‘n’ roll, and the blues, the real raw blues, just about died out. And as a lot of the old guitar players were passing away, it became less and less that you could find anybody that could play them, because of it. The younger people, they were learning different types of music. And it had just about died out, really, and I’ll say until maybe, maybe the last five, six, seven years. Then, like the folk festivals, you know, they would start to become popular. And, they have these things out in the park, and they’d ask people to come. And then a lot of people who was interested in the music of different groups of people. Then they started like, becoming more interested in exposing people to them, you know, that old type of blues thing. That’s if they could find somebody that could play it. Like I say, it was just dying out. But now, I think, a lot of the old guys that are still around and guys that can play the blues, they seem to be getting more jobs, and they’re playing more publicly. And, people are really interested in what it was like, how that music was way back then, you know. A lot of people haven’t even heard the raw blues, you know. They seem to be disinterested in it, really. You know, they’s – like a lot of black people, you know, during a period there, if you come in and you going to play the raw blues, they don’t want to hear that, you know. They all, “We don’t want to hear that, man. Put something on that’s swinging.” You know, “We don’t want to hear no blues, you know.”
Why was that?
Possibly years back when segregation was more apparent in this country, it was like anything a black man could do really wasn’t worthwhile. This was kind of the attitude people of other races had, if a black man is doing it, it can’t be all that good. And people back then might have thought, “Well, maybe we don’t have nothing here and the younger people growing up don’t want to hear that. They don’t want to hear that old hick stuff, you know, they want to hear something different.” I think they just got out of touch with that type of playing. There are some young people into it but very few, very few. It’s mostly young white students. They’re more interested in that type of blues. I think it takes a special type of black man to play that kind of blues today and really feel it. You see, the black man’s blues has a lot of feeling. It’s very profound, you know.
How about records?
I’ve recorded with Chief Ellis on an album and also a 45 with him. I have a recording in the Library of Congress; also I have one in Ferrum College down in Virginia. I’ve signed a contract with Trix Record Company up in Rosedale, New York, to do a solo album and we have a new album, Phil and I, on a German label but it was recorded here in Washington and at my home. It’s called Bowling Green John and Harmonica Phil Wiggins from Virginia, U.S.A. It’s on the L+R label, Lippmann and Rau. They also recorded Archie Edwards and Flora Molton.
How do you feel about what we’re doing now, I mean interviews? Are they part of the blues business?
I’m very enthusiastic about interviews, especially where people will get exposed to the conversations that we have and maybe get a better insight into the blues and the blues musicians themselves. And I’m always eager to tell people what it’s all about, how I learned, and what the blues is all about, and probably create more interest in the blues, ‘cause a lot of people don’t really know, you know. So much of our history has been suppressed or just hasn’t been paid attention to.
So this is our effort to keep the blues alive. I can play some upbeat stuff, I can sing it, but I would rather do this to let the people know what the black man’s culture is, what his heritage is. This is what the old folks was all about as far as the music was concerned.
[While John refers to his music as old fashioned blues or raw blues, his description can be misleading. His repertoire consists of traditional songs, East Coast blues learned from old 78s and an occasional R&B standard but he sings in a sophisticated soulful manner. The combination of country blues repertoire, country blues instrumentation and progressive vocal style make for an appealing and higher energetic blend of the old and the new. From this perspective his and Phil’s sound reflects the future more than the past but a future which draws strength from tradition.
His partner Phil Wiggins, was born in 1954 and is also a Washington native. He taught himself to play harmonica when he was 16 and through jamming with local artists such as John Jackson and Flora Molton and touring bluesmen Sunnyland Slim, Hound Dog Taylor, and Eddie Shaw, has developed a harp style reminiscent of Sonny Terry. His East Coast country blues sound ideally complements John’s aggressive fingerpicking style . . . ]
How did you get into playing blues?
PHIL WIGGINS: I just like good music. My mother collected records – boogie woogie piano, Meade Lux Lewis, Brownie McGhee and Sonny, Sleepy John Estes.
My folks are from Alabama and I used to spend a lot of time down there and go to these prayer meetings. And they had these call-and-answer prayer songs – my grandmother would lead these things, she’d sing out and they would answer.
First harp I had was made of plastic and there was a little book, how to play by numbers, but my step-sister had a fancy harp my father had bought for her, so I just swiped that and learned to play on it.
My father played a little bit of piano and I came to find out later when I played with Chief that he and my father grew up together down in Alabama in a little town outside Birmingham, a town called Titusville, Alabama. So I guess I grew up listening to Southern music and liking it, you know.
When I was about 14 or so, just, you know, as something to do, I wanted to play and I wanted to get involved in music and I just happened upon it. Yeah, I mean I just picked up a harmonica and, I guess my first influences, well, person-to-person influence was Flora Molton, who’s a street singer here in town. I’ve been seeing her all my life and the more I started playing . . . I’ve had the opportunity to, you know – I went out one day when I was a freshman in high school, I went out to her house with a friend of mine, just jammed with her and the I started playing with her on a regular basis.
I got my style playing with Flora Molton. She’s a street singer so she plays a strong rhythm thing, doesn’t change chords too much, so I developed a style to try to fill in behind her. I met some guys down at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival from playing down there with Flora. I met John Shines and he came down there a lot and we got pretty tight. And I would talk to him and I said as much as I enjoyed playing with Flora, my real interest was in playing some blues. So he said one of these days he’d call me up to jam with him, so it just happened that when he got around to doing it, it was like on a set where Chief and John and Bellamy were playing. And they called John Shines up and then he called me up. He was kind of taking me under his wing. He says, “I’m gonna mouth a riff to you, you play it after I do.” So it was pretty cool.
That’s where I met John and Chief – that was back in 1974, so after jamming I started playing in their band. It was Chief Ellis and the Barrelhouse Ramblers. It was like me and John and a guy named James Baldwin playing bass, uh, and Chief. And Chief passed away, and since then John and I have been performing as a duo kind of off and on here.
Who do you think has influenced you?
My influences, I guess have basically been Sonny Terry, you know. I later got into Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson, people like that. Mainly, you know, I just drew from people that I’d jam with on a person-to-person basis. I learned as much from guitar players and piano players that I’ve known and played with as I have from all the harp players. Even more than from other harp players.
What do you hope for the future?
I’d like to have more time to spend doing it, you know. Like now, like working, like an eight-hour day thing it’s hard to, I mean, you don’t have time. I think that if I was working part-time or something I could get us more gigs, because I’d have more time to devote to like us getting together and also to promotion and, you know, getting around hustling. Like the way my lifestyle is now, I need steady income. So it’ll be a while before I devote my time to music. It just doesn’t pay that much, you know. It’s hard to . . . I mean even like places that you would think are top places, to play around town don’t really pay that much, you know.
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Dr. Barry Lee Pearson, Professor in the English Department at the University of Maryland stands as the most steadfast supporter of the local acoustic blues scene in the greater Washington, D.C., area and beyond. As a musician, author, college lecturer, folklorist, and personal friend to the musicians, he has been the voice of this regional blues scene.