James Yank Rachell: Blues Mandolin
James “Yank” Rachell (1910 or 1903-1997) was born near Brownsville, Tennessee, and grew up in the country. After making a diddly bow as a youngster he traded a pig for a mandolin. He and his brother began to play locally, working local parties. In early 1920s he teamed up with lifelong friend Sleepy John Estes with whom he worked and recorded from 1929 on. He also worked with a Young John Lee Williamson, aka Sonny Boy Williamson, until Williamson moved to Chicago in 1937. Rachell continued to record but would not leave his family. Despite maintaining various day jobs farming, working for the railroad and later on a dairy, he consistently kept recording with various musicians and was active in the Brownsville, St. Louis and Chicago blues communities. Moving to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1958, he reunited with Estes and was an active participant in blues revival tours and recording through the 1960s and 1970s. He recorded many blues classics, including “The Girl I Love Has Long Black Curly Hair,” “Diving Duck Blues,” and “Good morning Little School Girl.”
This interview took place in Largo, Maryland, October 2, 1993.
“When I was a kid I would get a piece of wire and stretch it on something and pick on it, you know. And they had one of these old graphophones. Had a horn to it. It wasn’t like these record players today. Old graphophones, you had to wind it up. Had a horn to it. And I’d hear that. And I tried to play, you know. I went and made me one out of a wire, try to make me one out of wire. Out of a broom handle and everything. I did all sorts of something like that, way back in the country you couldn’t get hold of nothing. Old people didn’t give you nothing they didn’t have nothing. It wasn’t no town. You was 10 miles from town. Well, my god, if you used to go to town once a month, you doing good, you know.
So I just did the best I could until I come up my own self.
I was going down a dusty road. It wasn’t no street in them days. Nothing but dusty roads. People didn’t have no concrete when I come up. Dust was knee deep. You go down the street, a car come by it cover you up in dust. Well, this man was sitting on his porch, and I was going down that dusty road. Had a gold mandolin, one of them old striped back mandolins. That’s what you call gold mandolin – had stripes called a ‘tater bug.’ Setting on his porch and I went by his house. And he said, and I said. The man was named Harvey Ross. And I said: ‘Mr. Harvey, what is that you got?’
‘This is a mandolin, son.’
I looked at it. I was used to a guitar, you know. I said: ‘I like it. Let me see it.’ And he handed it to me. I said, ‘I like this.’
‘Let me sell it to you.’
I said,’ What you take for it?’
‘Five dollars.’ Well, five dollars was like five hundred to me then. Out in the country way back my daddy didn’t give me no money and he didn’t have no money either. Well, I didn’t know where I’m going to get five dollars. I said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll trade you a pig for it.’
‘All right. Go get the pig.’ My father raised hogs, them fine blood hogs. Poland, China. I said, ‘All right, sir.’
I went home and got me a tote sack and went to the barn. Called a pig out, give him some corn, grabbed him and put him in the tote sack, went around that thicket and give the man the bag. The man give me the mandolin.
I come on home. I was happy and he was too because he had a pig that was worth some when it grew up. But I didn’t care. I wanted that mandolin. I brought it home, couldn’t play nothing. No tune or nothing, just banging on it. Then they had all those strings on it and I thought I was doing something Blam. Blam. Blam.
That old man, he didn’t like it. He say, ‘Boy, put that thing down and let’s go to bed.’
‘All right, Daddy.’ He go to bed. I go when he has to go to work. I get up and get it. I’m going to work on it.
Mother wouldn’t say nothing for a while. But later that morning the old lady got up, had a head rag on, sat there by the fireplace. My name is James, but everybody calls me Yank, my nickname. Because my grandmother named me ‘Yank.’ She says, ‘James.’
I say ,’Ma’am.’
‘Where’s your pig? I ain’t seen them in a day or two.’
I said, ‘I ain’t either, Mama.’ But I kept on stroking on that thing, you know. I know where the pig was. The man had the pig, you know.
And so she said, ‘Go see can you find him.’
I say, ‘Yessum.’
I put my mandolin down for a minute. Went out to the barn, stood in the barn, hid from her to make her think I was looking for the pig. I come on back, say, ‘You see that pig anywhere, James?’
‘Mama, I ain’t see’d that pig nowhere.’ Then I picked it up and went back again. Then like I wasn’t worried about the pig which I wasn’t. I was worried about that mandolin. I picked it up and went back. Then that paid attention to her.
She says: ‘What is that thing?’
I said,’ Mandolin.’
‘Mandolin?’
I says, ‘Yeah.’
‘Where’d you get it?
I said, ‘I got it from a man down the road.’
‘What man?
Now, if I had stole that mandolin, I wouldn’t be here today. The old folks kill you in them times if you steal. Better not steal nothing. I said, ‘I got it, Mama, from the. Man there.’ I didn’t want to tell her I traded the pig off. You know, they give me the pig.
(She went) in the yard, near the bottom. They had a willow tree sitting in the yard and took four switches. She got every switch off that tree. The tree withered. She got all the switches. She come in there. Commenced: she said, ‘You gonna tell me something about that man and that thing there you got.’
I said, ‘Oh, Mama, I got it.’
She said, ‘I’m gonna whup you.’ I didn’t mind if she whip me. She said: ‘Pull them clothes off.’ Say: ‘I ain’t gonna whip them clothes. I bought them. I ain’t gonna wear them out. But I’m gonna wear you out.’
Uh-oh, I had to tell her. I said, ‘Mama, I traded the pig for it.’
She said, ‘Oh, I ought to whip you to death.’ She said, ‘No, I ain’t gonna whip you, son. You’re crazy.’ Said, ‘This fall when we have the meat, eat the meat,’ said, ‘you eat that thing.’
I learned mandolin the hard way out in the country by myself so far back in the woods my breath smelled like cordwood. I picked so much cotton I could look at a stalk of cotton and tell how many pounds were on it.
I plays mandolin. And I used to play guitar, but I quit playing guitar. There’s so many guitar players. I switched over to mandolin so I won’t be bothered by no mandolin players. Because there ain’t no mandolin players. I haven’t found any. I’d like to see one, could play the blues on mandolin. Some stroke the blues but they don’t play the blues. I don’t strike it, I plays it. If I say something my music is going to say it.
I don’t say one thing and my mandolin doing something else and I sing something else. It says what I say. If it don’t I don’t play.
I guess I’m the only fool playing blues on it. I play blues at least I try to. What I play on the guitar I play on the mandolin. So it’s just a gift to me to play it.
It wasn’t no teachers in them days. It wasn’t no music teacher. I’m way out in the country. Where am I gonna find a music teacher? I didn’t even know about basketball when I come up. We played baseball, old raggedy ball, make us an old raggedy ball.
I just liked the blues. It was just a gift for me I guess. And I just would have the blues. When you come back from where I come from you would have them. Way back. Nothing. You can’t hear nothing but the hooting owl. You go to town probably once a month. Get one pair of shoes a year. Man, it’s something. You got to get out there and plow all day with two mules. It wasn’t no tractor. It wasn’t no tractor or nothing. You got to hoe that cotton one row at a time. You hoe two or three rows a day, well you done done a day’s work. You come home you got to go draw water, pack water to the house. You got to make a fire to heat the water. To take a bath. You got to take a bath in one of those old tin tubs. You got to get in the tin tub. Didn’t have no hot water to turn it on and take a bath. Had to get in a tin tub and tote the water and get it warm before you take a bath. You have to take a bath and that, well, by the time you do that and you go to bed. You get up the next morning you got to make a fire in the stove. Didn’t have no electric. You got to make kindling make a fire in the stove to cook and eat. Come back you have to do the same thing. You got to cut up wood at night for to keep the heat going for the fireplace. You got to do all of that, man. That will make you have the blues. Make you have the blacks to tell you the truth.
Kids today got it made. Turn on a switch the light come on. We had to go to a store way out, old country store get kerosene to put in a lamp on the mantelpiece to have a light to see by. you had to clean out the lamp chimney and put coal oil in it. So you sit that, one on each side of the mantelpiece. If you got two lamps, you got to read by that.
I come along I had to walk 10 miles to school. Didn’t have no bus to go to school. I walked to school. Tote an old bucket in my hand, got a biscuit or two in it. Sometimes I didn’t have nothing. I had to go to school. But now they have food at the school to feed them. But I had to walk to school rain or shine.
I’ve been all over and I never been in no trouble and I’m glad of that. Because them days and times when I come along, you better not get in no trouble. You better not steal nothing. You better not do the wrong thing if you want to live. Because them old folks would kill you, beat you to death. And I go to your house and do something wrong, you whip me and I go home I’m gonna get another one. See. So I had to straighten up and fly right.
So I went on. I walked two or three miles, four miles, and played for 50 cents and was glad to get it. I practiced all the time. All I could.
Well, I had two brothers. My oldest brother and my baby brother. We all three could play. We’d trade around. I’d play a while and he’d play a while. I play the guitar a while and hand it to him. He play the guitar a while. I play the mandolin a while and he’d play it a while. So we three boys were musicians. But they passed away. Then I teamed up with Sleepy John Estes. And we played together 40 years and he passed away.
We would play country parties, fish fries, oh man, way out in the country. See, there wasn’t no other place nowhere to play, so I’d play out in the country like this time of year. Now, getting ready for fall. People’s gathering and harvesting cotton and stuff. They pick their cotton, carry it to a gin, a little place called a gin. They gin that seed out. They’d have a bale of cotton. Well, everybody gonna have a supper, they call it. A supper. They’d go on a Friday, buy fish, carry it home. In the kitchen women put the table across the kitchen door. They’d be in the kitchen cooking fish, frying fish. Well, we’d be out here playing music. Well, that’s a fish fry. Tomorrow night he gonna have a supper we’d go out and play for him. Sometimes they break the floor in. Sometimes they get to fighting and shoot the windows out.
And I met Sonny Boy in Jackson, Tennessee, riding a bike through Jackson. He wanted to go play with me and I thought he was too young. I wouldn’t fool with him. Anyway, I taken him up one night, went out in the country to a man’s place and played. And he got out there. He got stuck on the man’s wife, the man’s wife got stuck on him. The man run us off away from there. So I started playing with Sonny Boy then. We went to New York, Chicago. And we were recording.
And then I got married and so Sonny Boy, he wanted to go to Chicago from Jackson. He begged me to go to Chicago with him. I said, ‘No, Sonny Boy. I can’t leave my family.’ I said, ‘I have to stay here with them.’
‘Oh, come on, man, we’ll make plenty of money up there. I went up there and made plenty of money.’
I said, ‘I can’t go.’
Well, he went on back. In about a month or two he come back at me. I wouldn’t go. I said, ‘Just go. I can’t leave my family, man. I can’t.’
So next thing I heard he got killed. See, that’s the way that happened. He got killed up there.
I’ve been in places where they shoot the windows out, shoot the light out, and everything. But I was there. I didn’t have no sense. Young, we out there drinking that old white corn whiskey. They make whiskey. They gambling, out in the crib gambling. They’d be in the house, his wife dancing. He’s coming out, he done lost his money, he gonna come in there mad. ‘What you doing dancing with my wife? What you talking with my wife about?’ Well, blah, blah, blah. ‘All right – boom, boom.
See, all that happened. I been through it. But I don’t play for a bunch of folks no more. Country supper, a dance, fish fry. We’d be in there picking and they’d dance. Well, the women in the kitchen cooking fish and you’d get a fish sandwich. They’d set it down on the table and you would stand up there and eat it. Fish and chitlin’s. We eat chitterlings and fish and drink that white whiskey and we have a big time all night long, sometimes all that Sunday. That Monday morning we go to work.
Next Friday night, such and such a one having a supper. Well, they come get us. I had a band. Me and Sleepy John Estes. Say another bunch have their band. Those guys get this band. ‘They playing such and such a place.’ ‘Such and such a one playing over there.’ ‘Yank Rachell and them playing over there.’ ‘I’m going where they at. They make the best music, Yank and Sleepy John.’ That’s the way it went all the time, you know. People go around and do that. So we done that and done that. They selling white whiskey and them police get you and try to arrest you, catch you selling it. And they were buying it for me to sell it, but they arrest you for it.
The first record I made was in 1929 in Memphis, Tennessee. Yeah, they blocked up the street. Well, Sleepy John and I made that record, 1929. ‘The Girl I love Got Great Curly Hair. Her mother and daddy sure don’t allow me there.’ On the other side, ‘Diving Duck Blues.’ I and Sleepy John’s first one made any records down that way. After we made them, well, a lot more of them got to. And the street was blocked. The street in town and the police and to come and run the folks away, because they couldn’t get by because they listened to that record. It was something new, you know.
‘We from, we boys went down and made some records.’ Well, it was something new to me and everybody else. That was 1929. Make folks think I’m an old man. Yeah, I was born in 1910. I don’t mind telling my age. I’m glad to be here. Because so many of thems gone since I been here. Mostly all that come up with me is gone. Yeah, they going every day. But I’m well blessed because guys have tried to get me to come and go off and leave my family, see. But I wouldn’t do it. I made a number about good morning little schoolgirl – that was in the ‘30s. I don’t know I might have done forgot. I wrote that in the ‘30s, me and Sonny Boy Williamson and Sleepy John Estes.
I played some in the streets, but not as much. I never did do much for playing in the streets. I would go in a building somewhere and play. Well, I didn’t play for a living. I never did play for a living. I always had a job. That’s one thing. I been in a job. My mother always told me that. I always had a job. I worked at a dairy farm for 7, 8 years. I’d get up milking cows at 5 o’clock in the morning. Sometimes I’d just come in and change clothes and go right to milking the cows, bottling the milk, bottling and ship it off all day. But I’d played that night. That’s all right. It didn’t hurt me. See, I was used to it. I got used to it. I’ve had my ups and downs. I tell you what I do. I write the blues. I play the blues. I love the blues. I’m Yank Rachell. I don’t go around trying to play like Muddy Waters and BB. Everybody you see trying to play like BB King or Muddy Waters. I’m not them. It’s me. I went to play one night and sat down and played. They came out there and say: ‘Can you play BB King?’ I said,. ‘Yeah, put some strings on him. I’ll play him.’
Say, I’m Yank Rachell. I play my own style and it’s might few people play my style. A lot of them try to play and mess it up. I write my own songs myself. I go to the studio, my songs come to me just like that. But I don’t go try to play somebody else’s songs. I play my own songs. Some of them can’t play with me. Some love to play with me. And everywhere I go they give me respect. BB and everybody. If he can play the blues, I can too. It’s simple as that. Yes, sir. I have the blues so bad sometimes they turn to the blacks. I can play the blues if I have to. If I want to play the blues I can play and I know I can play. Ain’t no use me telling a lie and say that I can’t. But it don’t make a fool out of me because I can play. I don’t act a fool about it.
Some of them understand the blues some don’t. Some of them don’t understand anything and they ain’t trying to learn and some of them will never know but some of them do. That’s the way the world goes.
If you got the blues, it’s a sad feeling, and you’re lonesome and blue, when you feel like all your friends done put you down. Like nobody don’t care nothing about you. Then you feel lonely. Feel like you ain’t wanted. Well, that just makes you have the blues. A lot of people holler.
I’m bored. I’m sitting around here bored. They got the blues and don’t know it.
When you get old you can do what you used to do. I’m 83 years old and I’m glad to be here. I ain’t going to tell a lie about my age. I been here a long time.
Some of them tell me: ‘You old.’ Yeah if you don’t want to get old you gonna die young.”
Barry Lee Pearson
University of Maryland
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.