Artist Spotlight: th’ Bullfrog Willard McGhee

Posted by FanceyBeats on Jun 8, 2010 in Artist Spotlight, Blues | 1 comment | 356 views

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Biography:

“When I was eight or nine, my old man asked me what I wanted to be after I’d grown up. ‘Peter Pan, William Kunstler or a folksinger,’ I replied. He clutched me to his bosom and sobbed. He smelled like Old Spice and nicotine and peppermints and old books…he was a librarian, you know. Years later, it occurred to me that he might have been laughing…” – (concert recording made 01.19.2001, Hobnobbery, Lewisburg, WV.)

Bullfrog’s sensibility is informed by his deep West Virginia roots: the politics and humor of his father’s family; the tradition and spirituality of his mother’s family; the high undulating horizons of Mercer County. A graduate of West Virginia University, he has a degree in History which he earned studying the 19th century migrations of musical instruments, repertoire and culture in the Eastern U.S. and their influence on 20th century music, particularly mountain music, early country music and blues. This research led to personal and musical associations with Don Stover and the Lilly Brothers, Nat Reese, John Cephas, Phil Wiggins, John Jackson, Aunt Jenny Wilson, Ed Cabell and many others.

West Virginia has a colonial economy fueled by the world’s boom/bust appetites for coal, timber and salt. In boom-times everybody stays home where there’s jobs and family. In bust times, kids from West Virginia are more likely to grow up in the hillbilly ghettoes of Columbus, Detroit or Chicago where their folks make tires, assemble cars or pack meat during the week. On the weekends, of course, they all drive the 77 or 64 or 79 interstate highways back to their home counties to see the folks and eat real tomatoes. Sometimes they migrate to California or some square-red-river-state out west. Bullfrog’s family crossed the Ohio River and lit briefly in all of these places.

In Chicago, Bullfrog found great bluesmen in the phone book. Johnny Shines, Dave Edwards and Howard Armstrong all agreed to meet him and with great tolerance and good humor showed him those few licks he treasured but could not remember. Mostly, they told stories and bickered and described in bewildered tones a country that had become unrecognizable in their own formidable lifetimes…….

http://www.myspace.com/thbullfrogwillardmcghee