Beverly Guitar Watkins - Dont Mess with Miss Watkins '2010

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. Too Many Times
02. Miz Dr. Feelgood
03. Impeach Me Baby
04. Red Mama Blues
05. The Right String but the Wrong Yoyo
06. Right Dont Wrong Nobody
07. Get out on the Floor
08. Late Bus Blues
09. Back in Business
10. Sugar Baby Swing
11. Baghdad Blues
12. Jesus Walked The Water


Georgia-based guitarist, singer, and songwriter Beverly Guitar Watkins is one
part soul singer, one part rockin roadhouse mama, and one part gifted
songwriter. Shes also been chronically under-recorded for a woman with her
résumé: she spent the early 60s playing rhythm guitar with Piano Red & the
Interns. She recorded with Piano Red from 1959 until the mid-60s, and can be
heard on his popular singles Doctor Feelgood and Right String But the Wrong Yo
Yo. Watkins learned guitar and got her earliest musical sensibilities from
several of her aunts, who had a quartet named the Hayes Family. She also had a
banjo playing grandfather, Luke Hayes. On holidays and at family get-togethers,
these musicians would assemble and the blues and gospel were passed on in a true
folk process to the young Watkins.
Her earliest influences included Rosetta Tharpe, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and
Memphis Minnie, and she was exposed to the music because of her grandmother, who
would play their recordings on the family Gramophone. She began playing guitar
as an eight-year-old, learning by listening to the records her mother would play
for her. Later, she was exposed to the records of touring bands, including Louis
Jordans and Count Basies. She began to model her playing after Charlie Byrd and
Basies rhythm guitarist, Freddie Green. Throughout high school, she participated
in a variety of talent shows and played trumpet in the school band. Her high
school band master helped broaden her knowledge of jazz and blues guitar, and
piano. After a succession of bands in high school, she settled in with playing
with Piano Red, who later changed their name and found their widest appeal, as
Piano Red & the Houserockers, which led to bookings outside Atlanta and northern
Florida in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.
In 1965, the band broke up, but not before going through several more name
changes. Watkins then hooked up with Eddie Tigner and the Ink Spots and toured
extensively with that group, playing for nearly a year with him before he was
felled by a stroke. Watkins came off the road and took a break from the brutal
touring she had done for much of the 60s. She worked a procession of day jobs as
a domestic and in car washes before joining Leroy Redding & the Houserockers.
Watkins worked on and off with Redding until the late 80s before striking out on
her own and creating a residency for herself at Underground Atlanta, an Atlanta
nightclub, often accompanied by a drummer and her son on bass. Here she
developed her singing and harmonica-playing skills. Back in Business, her solo
debut album, was released in 2001 as part of the Music Maker Series distributed
by Sire Records Group/ Warner Bros. The album showcases Watkins flexibility and
prowess in a wide range of styles: roadhouse blues, jazz-inflected blues, and
rockabilly-blues. Now in her sixties, Watkins continues to perform in
Atlanta-area blues clubs and at major festivals around the U.S.. She put in a
particularly compelling, energetic performance at the 2000 Chicago Blues
Festival.

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