Shelton Powe plays in the Piedmont finger-style guitar tradition of his parents and elders, but it took him a long time to get back to that music.
Powe was born in 1957 in Charlotte, North Carolina, into a family of gifted instrumentalists, singers and dancers. His mother gave him harmonicas and guitars at Christmas, hoping to awaken a dormant musical aptitude, to no avail.
It wasn’t until the deaths of his mother and father in the late 1980s that Shelton became reacquainted with the rhythms and melodies of the old songs his parents used to sing. Picking up the guitar as a tribute to his deceased mother, Shelton set out to learn old-time blues and gospel the way he remembered it from his childhood. Living in Georgia, he immersed himself in the blues scene of Atlanta and soon found what he was looking for. Today, listening to him play and sing, you find yourself back at the wellspring of the Carolina Blues tradition.
More than a musical fancy, the Carolina blues is a piece of Shelton. His honest delivery is captivating. Since Shelton connected with Music Maker in 1997, he’s recorded his own album Carolina Blues and Gospel, released in early 2012, and he has played alongside many Music Maker artists, including Eddie Tigner, Mudcat, Cora Mae Bryant, Frank Edwards, Cootie Stark and Neal Pattman.
Shelton currently lives in Atlanta.
Fresh off a booking at the 2022 Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, the acclaimed Piedmont blues guitarist will release a new self-titled album of solo acoustic tunes this fall for Volume 55 of the Music Maker Foundation’s Listener’s Circle series. Arriving October 1st for members, the album will be released November 4th for the general public.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the raw and hypnotic track “Take Me Back,” which serves as the perfect vehicle to capture Powe’s haunting, wisened vocals and unique fingerstyle guitar playing. Indeed, this tune is about as bare bones as you can get with just Powe and his guitar. The starkness makes it feel like blues from another time long ago when bluesmen showed up at country bars, kicked open a guitar case, and proceeded to lay down sets of enchanting blues music. In this regard, it should come as little surprise that the song has a deep history in blues stretching back one hundred years. Now, Powe succeeds in doing this traditional tune justice with his own creative take.
Powe describes the decision to record the song:
“Take me back is one of those songs that many Bluesman play. I first heard it performed by Blind Lemon Jefferson. He recorded it in 1926 under the title Begging Back Blues. I don’t play it in the same traditional style. I play it slower with more of a sad rhythm.”
LISTEN:
