blind peach quincey
Apr 23 '07
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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Member: Bryan Shultz
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Preparing a quasi-return to writing. Stay tuned.
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