By Frank Matheis
One of the unique and wonderful aspects of the Washington, D.C., acoustic blues was and is a strong sense of community and kinship. This solidarity continues to this day and is one of the main differentiators of the vibrant D.C. blues scene compared to nearly any other. One of the early catalysts to unite the local musicians of the African American community was the Travellin’ Blues Workshop, comprised of young music fans who recognized that within their midst were folk blues musicians of great cultural importance. The Travellin’ Blues Workshop was a non-profit organization founded in 1974 by Elliot Ryan, the publisher of the Unicorn Times, at that time a free weekly arts and culture newspaper that was very popular in the D.C. metro region between 1973 and 1986. This newspaper was also an important voice for the traditional blues scene, with a series of significant articles published by writers such as Richard Harrington, who later joined the Washington Postas a music critic. Many readers, mostly young college students in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia, were first made aware that there even was a local, deep-roots African American blues scene in the region by reading the local free press.
The Travellin’ Blues Workshop, coupled with Elliot Ryan’s promotion of roots music in the Unicorn Times, hit at a time when the first generation of young white college students became aware of the acoustic traditional blues through the so-called “Folk & Blues Revival” that started in the early 1960s in North America and Europe. In the mid-1970s, Elliot Ryan and others also realized that some of the great tradition bearers of the East Coast country blues were right there in their midst. Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James had both lived in Washington, D.C., for a time and there were still numerous authentic musicians who played in the same deep roots tradition still active in the area, each performing within their own community. A new blues period was in full swing all over the U.S. and Europe, even in Japan; kids were seeking out the true country blues. While all this was going on, the D.C. musicians were largely under the radar. It took ten more years before the D.C. musicians would be in the spotlight in the mid-’70s, and among the first to recognize them was the Travellin’ Blues Workshop, with the help of Dr. Bernice Reagon, a singer (a founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock), composer, scholar and civil rights activist and a significant cultural force in Washington, D.C.
Paddy Bowman, now the Director of Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education in Alexandria, Virginia, was actively involved as a director of the organization from 1977 to 1980. In a 1978 application for a National Endowment of the Arts grant, she defined the organization’s mission: “…The workshop is dedicated to promoting black American traditional musicians…ensuring that this truly American art form does not die with its remaining practitioners. The Travellin’ Blues Workshop organizes concerts, promotes blues in schools and generally promotes the country blues musicians under its umbrella.”
Bowman explained, “Elliot Ryan started the Travellin’ Blues Workshop to get more gigs and exposure for these amazing musicians who were so overlooked – both in the D.C. area and nationally. So that was his intent, to pull them together with the hope that this would give them recognition and they could travel together and play together. He thought that colleges would be especially interested in tours.” [1]
In an undated internal memorandum, Bowman listed the workshop members: the “elders” Mother Scott, Elizabeth Cotten, John Jackson, Archie Edwards, Flora Molton and John Cephas; and the “apprentices” Ed Morris, Larry Wise, Phil Wiggins and Tim Lewis. The board of directors were: Elliot Ryan, Paddy Bowman, Elizabeth Cotten, Archie Edwards, Dr. Bernice Reagon and filmmaker Topper Carew. Bowman remembered, “All of these musicians were kind to one another, people were helpful to one another. And you could sometimes shame Archie into being nicer too; he was the only one who was a little selfish. But they were not big carousers. They were religious people. It wasn’t like people were out getting drunk and stoned and all messed up. They were certainly good friends to everybody.”
In a column titled City Lightsin the Washingtonian, Bowman published a press release circa 1978-1980:
…The Workshop brings together a troupe of performers, ranging in age from ‘about’ 50 to ‘about’ 85– most either don’t know their age or just won’t say. They are Flora Molton, the bottleneck-style street guitarist at 11th and F streets, Northwest; Archie Edwards, a former accompanist to the late Mississippi John Hurt; singer Mother Scott, who once played a traveling minstrel show with Bessie Smith; John Jackson, a guitarist from Rappahannock County, Virginia; guitarist John Cephas and Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten, whose distinctive guitar style, applied to songs like her own Freight Trainwas a familiar sound of the folk music revival of the early sixties. Travellin’ Blues will be booking the musicians into local clubs, and hopes to acquire a bus for touring the circuit of regional festivals and black colleges in the South. According to workshop director Paddy Bowman, they would also like to give concerts and seminars in local public schools, thus helping to keep the blues tradition alive.
Among the Travellin’ Blues Workshop’s sponsored events were a few major concerts. Paddy Bowman reminisced, “The Big Mama Thornton concert in September ‘77 was officially a Travellin’ Blues Workshop concert. Elliot Ryan rented Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University. Everybody performed, and then Big Mama Thornton came out. The audience was a lot smaller than we’d hoped. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival ‘78 and ‘79 featured Flora Molton. Numerous of our artists appeared at the National Folklife Festivals from ‘72 to ‘78, including Flora Molton and Phil Wiggins. Pete Seeger organized Great Hudson River Festival and also featured our artists. I took Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten down on the train to Richmond to open for Bonnie Raitt in probably ‘78.”
Bowman continued,
“One of the successes we had was that these younger musicians hung out with the older musicians. We had Phil Wiggins, Tim Lewis and Ed Morris but – they ended up switching who they played with. Tim was originally playing with John Cephas and Phil with Flora Molton. Then the friendship and musical partnership developed between Phil and John Cephas. John Cephas was working as a carpenter at the D.C. Armory at the time. He had been playing back-up for Big Chief Ellis – I think at that time he really wasn’t thinking of himself the way John Jackson did, as someone who could really get on stage and carry it by himself. I think [the Workshop] did a lot for John Cephas. It also brought these younger musicians together. I think Tim Lewis went on to teach film at Howard University – not to be a musician. Ed Morris, who played with Flora Molton, had a very tragic life and died of a brain tumor. He and Flora were very close friends. Flora Molton was the first person I knew with a video camera. She was documenting all the sermons that she gave – she had a little church up in Baltimore. I don’t think she had anybody film her while she was singing on the streets in D.C. Archie went on to form the whole barbershop scene. The Washington, D.C. Blues Society started, and I think John Cephas was in there at the beginning of the Blues Society. All these things happened and I think much of it was the outgrowth of the Workshop putting people together.
It is noteworthy that Elliot Ryan and Paddy Bowman were highly respected by the musicians under their umbrella, in large part because the organization was free of the problems that were all too often inherent with the reality of the “rediscovery process” of many black performers during the 1960s and ‘70s. The Travellin’ Blues Workshop approached the artists with respect and dignity, without selfish motives or financial incentives, truly intending to help overlooked local artists. This was not always the situation during the “rediscovery” period. Sometimes the relationship between the black artists and the educated white people who “found,” recorded and managed the artists, many of whom were in economically poor circumstances at the time, was at best unequal and at worst exploitative. There was a hierarchy of power because of financial and business interests, records to sell and a patronizing “we are here to preserve black culture” attitude. While this certainly does not apply to all situations and people, and it would be vastly unfair to do so, history proves that many of the artists were never fairly compensated for record sales royalties, book sales and use of their image and likeness. Paddy Bowman explained, “(The Travellin’ Blues Workshop) was not a bunch of white people saying, ‘Here’s how we are going to help you.’ I mean, this was us asking, ‘How can we help you?’” More than 30 years later, Phil Wiggins attributes the Workshop as having been an early career boost for him and his mates.”
The Travellin’ Blues Workshop disbanded in 1980, in its time only with modest achievements, never fully coming close to its original targets, but the legacy of the organization should never be underestimated. Their true achievements live on through the connections that were forged in those years. The Workshop brought these local musicians together and set the stage for future cooperation. By recognizing the importance of black culture and respecting its value, by supporting traditional acoustic musicians, and letting them know that they were admired and culturally valuable, the organization’s impact was paramount. In all that would follow over the next decades, the Workshop was the first major cultural institution to recognize and support these artists. They pointed the way for broader audiences and other local cultural institutions to heed the call: good things were going on in D.C. Later, the artists under the Travellin’ Blues Workshop umbrella all achieved international fame in their own right, and the Washington, D.C., acoustic blues community is still a vibrant and cohesive scene to this day.
The Travellin’ Blues Workshop archival photos, owned by Paddy Bowman, published for the first time in this book, are a cultural treasure that documented the early years of the burgeoning D.C. blues scene. Here we find the history of these musicians in a series of photographs taken at Avignon Freres Restaurant at 18th and Columbia Road, a common workshop meeting place. The former Travellin’ Blues Workshop photographer Elaine Powell took these photos in 1977.
[1] Frank Matheis Telephone Interview with Paddy Bowman, April 22, 2015.