By Frank Matheis
Jim Greene was a student of John Cephas’s who now carries on the Mid-Atlantic “Piedmont” country blues tradition in the Windy City, with a wide-ranging repertoire of fingerpicking and slide on both 6-string and 12-string guitar.
An ex-Marine who served his country and is now a criminal lawyer in Chicago, he gets his song fodder from observing his surrounding environment and people, confronted daily with hardship, suffering and personal turmoil of both the victims and those accused of crime. Every day he faces dramatic and dynamically powerful human forces of existentialist struggle, survival and raw emotion.
His training as a U.S. Marine instilled a sense of discipline and a get-it-done attitude. You don’t get this good as a musician if you don’t take it seriously and if you don’t work really hard at it over decades. Diamond Jim Greene spoke about his relationship to the late great Piedmont player John Cephas[1]
“John was – he was more than a mentor – he was a very, very close friend of mine. I met him back in the mid’80s. He was conducting a workshop over in Elkins, West Virginia, which just so happened to be the town my dad grew up in. John was holding a workshop at Blues Week. I had been playing for several years prior to that. John took me under his wing. And I met a lot of other great country blues players, Paul Geremia, Roy Book Binder, to name two right off the top of my head, Phil Wiggins, of course. We became friends after that. After the workshop I was living in North Stafford County, which is about 40 minutes north from where John was living in Caroline County, Virginia. He invited me down to his house, and I used to go down there quite a bit and we talked music and drank fine Scotch whiskey. John built his own house. He used to fish on the Rappahannock River, on the Chesapeake Bay and grew his own vegetables and was a decent cook. I remember going down there on Friday night and not leaving until Sunday afternoon, sometimes early Monday morning. It was all about music – playing music, listening to music, talking about music, talking about players, the cultural aspects of it, the therapeutic aspects of this music, trying to master that complex fingerpicking technique that he was so good at. I used to travel with him on occasion. I had the chance to play with him and Phil Wiggins at the Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. They were the stars of that event, and he called me up, and a couple other younger players, to join them on stage for a tune or two. And it was a great experience. Everything about him was just fantastic. I have great memories of him and Phil and the time I had with him… I’ve been playing in and around Chicago and in Europe for years now. I came back here to Chicago in about 1994 – ’93-94. I got on the Chicago Blues Festival for the first time in 1997. I started going over to Europe and playing in festivals and clubs beginning in about 1996. When I got serious about this music, around that time, around the mid ’80s, I met Archie Edwards and John Jackson through John Cephas. Right now the scene in Chicago doesn’t really lend itself to a straight up country blues player. I incorporate other styles of music into my regular act – some country blues, a few jazz tunes, some original tunes, some Piedmont style blues, a little ragtime and some Delta blues.”
Diamond Jim Greene – Coachhouse Blues – Coolingboard Records – 1998 – Cb1001
Diamond Jim Greene– Snapshots – Coolingboard Records – 2002– Cb201a
Diamond Jim Greene– Holdin’on– Coolingboard Records– 2006 – Cb5757a
Diamond Jim Greene– Surrounded– Coolingboard Records– 2012 – Cb6767a
[1] Telephone interview with Jim Greene. March 2, 2017.
