Remembering Furry Lewis in 1981
Ernest Herndon - September 21, 1981
[Editor's note: In this personal recollection, Ernest Herndon pays tribute to pioneer blues guitarist and singer Furry Lewis of Memphis.]

HE LIVED in a small house in one of the poorer parts of town, not far from downtown Memphis. Despite the fact that he made a number of albums and even had a part in a Burt Reynolds movie, Furry, like most master bluesmen, never accumul3ted much money. I have heard tales that such a state resulted from greedy and dishonest managers who gobbled much of the profits — but I really can't say.

CHANCES ARE, if Furry were alive now he wouldn't remember me. I suspect I was one of many pilgrims who came irregularly to see this master of the blues, to sit at his feet as it were and listen to him strum and sing "John Henry," "Going to Brownsville," "My Dog Blue." His version of "St. Louis Blues" remains perhaps the most chillingly beautiful versions of that classic I have ever heard. He played it slow, sliding out the graceful notes with his bottleneck
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Summer 1983 |
"I hates to see that rising sun go down," he would sing. I'd sit in the chair across from his bed and listen, maybe strumming an uncertain backup to his lilting bottleneck licks Then he might ask me to play. I watched his bottleneck style closely an( practiced it myself at home, untl I could match the notes on some of his easier songs Then one day he gave me a great honor when he said, "Say, that boy's pretty good."
OLD FURRY had a lot of friends. He was soft-spoken. with a gentle manner. He knew the blues. And he knew how to sing them and play them. I read that at his funeral several hundred persons attended. I didn't make it, but maybe tonight sit down and play the "St. Louis" blues and think about him for awhile.
Sid Selvidge and Arne Brogger were two of the contributors and music lovers who funded the both the upright marker and the smaller footer in the summer of 1983. The marker remains atop his grave. In 2016, the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund marked another grave inside the cemetery and straightened the thick marker of Furry Lewis.
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