The ultimate one-man-band wild man from the 1920-1990s Abner Jay was the most unusual music talent the world has ever seen and a true southerner. His original LPs are now sought after and very rare, making this CD reissue very welcome.
"Describing himself as "the last great Southern black minstrel show", Abner Jay was a travelling one-man band and revenant folk spirit who performed lugubrious versions of original blues, traditional American spirituals alongside his own material in a baritone several leagues below Johnny Cash. By slowing his source material to a laggard, awkward lollop, Jay rescued it from decades of blacked-up virtuoso mimicry, refocusing attention on its ragged edges, emotional depth and complex humanity. Jay joined Silas Greens Minstrels in 1932 on the back of a huge repertoire of banjo and old-time songs learnt from his grandfather, who had been a slave in Washington County, Georgia. He went on to lead the WMAZ Minstrels on Macon radio from 1946-56 before going solo and touring the country in his portable 'log cabin', complete with its own PA system, from where he would perform and sell cassettes and LPs, when not in residence at Tom Flynn's Plantation Restaurant in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Jay died in 1993 and since then his LPs have become almost impossible to track down. Anthony Braxton described Jay as an "American master" and his banjo, guitar and harmonica playing is every bit as idiosyncratic and unmediated by the tyranny of 'correct' technique as Braxton's own. And the tongues given voice to here are drawn from deep within the murk of centuries," David Keenan, Great Lost Recordings, The Wire, October 2003.
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