by Frank Matheis
The acoustic blues in the nation’s capital has a long history. Nobody can go back in time and name all the fine players who might have lived and played there without ever achieving fame and recognition. Even during the 1970s, when Phil Wiggins was already active on the music scene, there were mysterious and unsung players of fine reputations who never recorded. Among them are the brothers Leroy and Willie Gaines, friends and musical compatriots of Archie Edwards, who often joined the jam sessions at Archie’s barbershop. Their peers on the local scene exalted these players, but they are now missing from the blues archives. Both John Cephas and Archie respected them, but unfortunately, as far as we know, the Gaines Brothers never made a record and played only within their own community. There is hardly any historical record of them, and they remain an enigma. Judging by the accolades and respect the others had for them, they must have been amazing players. When Archie Edwards mentioned the guitar players of the region in an interview with Dr. Barry Lee Pearson, he listed the Gaines Brothers right up there with the best of the region, most of whom went on to achieve a level of fame that the Gaines Brothers would not get to experience: “You know, the guitar is pretty famous here on the East Coast. So, I think you can find lots of blues players around here, like John Tinsley, the Gaines Brothers Willie and Leroy, John Cephas, Flora Molton, John Jackson and his son James. They’re all from Virginia.”[i]
Archie Edwards told Dr. Barry Lee Pearson,
We’d have Saturday night gatherings at the barbershop. The Gaines brothers, Leroy and Willie Gaines, different people sit around, play the guitar, drink a few beers, a little whiskey. He could holler so loud that your windowsill would rattle. Good Lord say, “Willie Gaines, get out there on the mountain and holler!” He’d wake them up. Yes, sir, Willie Gaines get up on some mountain and yell, he’d wake everybody down in the valley. That boy had a voice on him, and he was so stout he could take his guitar strings off it, come back on it, and pull the strings off it. He ruined so many guitar strings on me that I said, “Wait a minute. My guitar strings don’t wear out like this.” I said “Willie, you’re so strong that when you pull back, you tear the dad-blamed strings up.” Yes, sir, he was something. And Willie could dance, too. He was an all-around guy.[ii]
The German photographer Axel Küstner, who first recorded Cephas & Wiggins on his Living Country Bluesalbum series, remembered that Archie Edwards took him to see Leroy Gaines in his home in Washington in 1978, and he took one of the few remaining photos of him. Axel Küstner recalled,
After we interviewed and met Archie at the barbershop, Archie had met the Gaines Brothers, and then Archie took him and me over to meet Leroy Gaines, one of his buddies. We went over to Leroy’s home that evening and I did some tape recordings. It was some instrumental piece or some pieces I did not at that time know the title. He jammed with Archie and some with Tim Lewis, but one song that I could remember was “Rattlesnake’n Daddy,” and “Lovin’ Spoonful”…Probably compared to Archie I felt that he might have been a little rusty. He was definitely not in the same class as Archie. I especially remember that I had a camera, a 35mm with a flash, and I remember very well that he was under the impression that he would be on TV. I went back two years later, but I don’t think I would have considered him good enough or interesting enough to have him recorded for the Living Country Blues series. So that was the only time I ever met him that evening for a brief time – maybe an hour or so, you know. [iii]
Küstner’s assessment is contrary to the high esteem that many of their musical compatriots had for Leroy and Willie Gaines. His fateful decision not to record Leroy Gaines may have been a great loss for the blues history, but alas, it was not meant to be. Using a Bob Dylan idiom, the Gaines Brothers stayed “complete unknowns” who would have faded into total obscurity, were it not for the glowing ways in which Archie Edwards spoke of them.
[i] Pearson, Barry Lee, Virginia Piedmont Blues- The Lives and Art of Two Virginia Bluesmen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,1990) 68.
[ii] Pearson, Barry Lee, Virginia Piedmont Blues- The Lives and Art of Two Virginia Bluesmen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press Paperback, 1990,) 60.
[iii] Quotation source for Axel Küstner: all from an interview with Frank Matheis, May 9, 2015.
