blind peach quincey Apr 23 '07    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet The Bottom Line A poetic tribute to the delta blues legend that never was. Or was he? in the pages of some dusty old history of mississippi you might stumble across the rarely heard-of bluesman blind peach quincey, who was born on the edge of that moccasin den known as the holligahassee bayou to a slave girl raped and emancipated by a union army passing through. his entire childhood was spent in the local cemetery, plucking a guitar crafted from the wood of a lynchin’ tree, with a black cat at his side and a black hat angled forward to conceal his lack of eyes from each and every stranger. instead of performing on the courthouse steps and street corners for tips, he’d only show up at wakes and spooky goings-on out in the sticks, where he’d mystify listeners by singing like a graveyard worm and doing eerie things such as pulling noises from the “hell harp” when his fingers were nowhere near the strings. and while a studio fire sent his recorded works up in flames, his songs continue to live on in the oddness of their names; “savior late blues”, “river bottom rag”, “me and miss costello’s body”- who can hear such titles and not lament their loss? of course, his most infamous composition, “fallen angel’s hand in mine”, is why he occupies a place among the delta’s boogeymen; for it’s said that merely turning one verse of that dirge-like number loose on an audience would every time result in a suicide or mysterious disappearance. the exact nature of his demise has never been discovered, though some have attributed it to a hatchet-wielding lover or a vicious cardsharp whose talents included sticking his ice pick into any opponent who might be winning. legend has it that somewhere in the vicinity of meags, there’s a solitary and badly-worn tombstone that marks a derelict grave, and any person brave enough to spend a night atop that weedy plot where maggots graze will be rewarded with an earful of “he’s comin’ down that road with eyes ablaze” Copyright 2007

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