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Guitar Mac Blues Express Where The Quality Went In Before The Name Went On".






"Guitar Mac "
The Cavalier Of The Blues.

Making The News


The Montery County Herald
Sunday, June 28, 1998

Pickin' The Blues

Guitar Mac plays the Blues on a "steel guitar" to the Garden Stage audience at the Monterey Bay Blues Festival.
Excerpts From The Article in "Real Blues" Magazine, June/July '98

- By Andy Grigg

It's very easy to complain about a situation that bothers you, but it's another thing altogether to do something constructive and productive and positive to change whatever is that's "not right." Those people, who take it upon themselves to be the catalyst or leader in a situation where both hard work (often thankless) and imagination are in demand, are to be admired, comended and hopefully copied by others. Guitar Mac has become known as the very vocal and very visible leader in the movement to promote and preserve blues music in the Sacramento area of California.

A relatively young man by blues standards, Mac has a unique understanding and appreciation of the blues that few of today's younger blues artists can lay claim to. Mac was born and raised in blues country; rural Arkansas, at a time (1950s) when blues music was at its peak as a past time and a form of entertain-ment. Having experienced first-hand the country juke-joints and the hard life that made those jukes an essential outlet for Black Americans in the South, Mac was also witness to the whole l960s; the "decade-of-change" that ushered in Civil Rights, Soul Music, Black Power and a total change in attitude towards blues music by Black America.

Now, in the l990s, things have come full circle it seems with today's African-Americans wanting to study and even embrace the music they had dis-missed and rejected ten years ago. Guitar Mac has worked diligently over the last 20 years to build his own career, but one can quickly come to the realization that Guitar Mac has been working even harder for the greater good, the 'Big Picture' - the future of the blues. His love for the blues transcends any ego related career promotion. His work in schools with the children, his concert festival organizing and especially his blues radio shows all show his desire and dedication to ensure that blues is understood, accepted and ultimately revered as the single-most important music form in American history.
Given the successes he's already had and the fact that he's become one of the most recognized and easily identifiable (thanks to some great looking hats) figures on the California blues scene, Guitar Mac's Blues Crusade is a perfect example by which to follow. If we had 100 Guitar Macs in America today or even a dozen more...there's the big moral/truth in this whole issue. Guitar Mac didn't wait for someone to lead him. He took it upon himself to get those things done or changed, and the blues world is a better place today because of his personal crusade.

AG: Where were you born?
GM: Cotton Plant, Arkansas.
AG: I take it it's in the middle of the cotton-growing area?
GM: Yeah, that's right, that's right, so actually in the town there was a flour mill and a little few other stores and stuff like that.
AG: where was it close too?
GM: I would say Brinkley, Arkansas...
AG: And what year was that?
GM: 1946.
AG: Do you have a large family?
GM: Pretty large family...well actually I got one brother and three sisters; there's live of us.
AG: Were your parents into music at all?
GM: They went to church; my mom went to church', and I had a stepfather, so you know my dad...I didn't really know him too well. He was like a railroad man, so he was always on the go, you know...it was my mom...everybody was always in the church - even my brother and my sisters right now; you can call them on Sunday, "Where you goin'?'...They're goin' to the church...
AG: Are your first memories of music then ba-sically church-related?
GM: Pretty much church; then of course there was radio in Arkansas and then pretty much what we listened to then was what was being played on the radio, like those big radio stations like WIAC out of Nashville...Randy's Record Shop, and WDIA which is out of Memphis with Nat D. Williams and Rufus Thomas...
AG: So lots of gospel, blues and R&B on the radio?
GM: Right Lots of blues, gospel and R&B. and I used to listen to people like...well actually there used to be a gentleman who came by the house all the time...we'd have stuff like fish-fry's on the week-end; our step-father used to have them, so he didn't play guitar or anything like that, but this guy...we used to call him Mr. Hosea, used to come by and he was the first guy I saw playin' a slide guitar when I was a kid..He used to sit in the back yard and play slide guitar.
AG: So his first name was Hosea?
GM: Hosea Orlando...that's what we used to call him, Mr. Hosea.
AG: How old would he have been when you were a kid?
GM: I guess I must have been probably around about ten. ..Between ten years old and fifteen...something like that
AG: And he would already have been an adult man then?
GM: Yeah, he was already an adult man then. And that was around Madison, Arkansas; around Madison and Forrest City, Arkansas, 'cause that's were we were livin' at then...' cause see I was born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas and we were raised around Madison, Arkansas...
AG: When did you first start getting inkling for getting into music yourself?
GM: Welt, I first got an inkling to get into mu-sic when I was a kid...actually, you know, we used to go chop cotton and pick cotton and chop soybeans and all that kind of stuff, and I have a friend named Johnny C. Newborn, well actually he was just a neighbor...right now he lives in Pine Bluff, Arkan-sas, and he taught me a couple licks on the guitar, a couple licks on the harmonica and also a couple licks...and he could play piano too, and he was just one of these guys that played, and he used to laugh all the time and said, "Well heck, piano is really easy to play because you sit there and look at it," and so he taught me a couple of licks on the guitar, and the harmonica and I just went from there. And he was a distant relative of Phineas Newborn,

Please See the current copy of "Real Blues" Magazine for the full article.