Editing Blind Willie McTell (section)

==Biography==
Most sources give the date of his birth as 1898 but researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest 1903 on the basis of his entry in the [[1910 census]].<ref name="bare">{{cite book| first1= Bob| last1= Eagle| first2= Eric S.| last2= LeBlanc| year= 2013| title= Blues: A Regional Experience| publisher= Praeger | location= Santa Barbara, California| pages=270 | isbn= 978-0313344237}}</ref> McTell was born [[Blindness|blind]] in one eye and lost his remaining vision by late childhood. He attended schools for the blind in Georgia, New York and Michigan and showed proficiency in music from an early age, learning to read and write music in [[braille]],<ref name="NGE"/> first playing the harmonica and accordion and turning to the six-string guitar in his early teens.<ref name=NGE>Jacobs, Hal. "[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-875 Blind Willie McTell]". ''The New Georgia Encyclopedia''. November 3, 2009. Retrieved June 30, 2011.</ref><ref name=UNC /> His family was rich in music; both of his parents and an uncle played the guitar and he and bluesman and gospel pioneer [[Thomas A. Dorsey]] were cousins.<ref name=UNC /> 

McTell's father left the family when Willie was young. After his mother died, in the 1920s, he left his hometown and became an itinerant [[songster]]. Like [[Lead Belly]], another songster who began his career on the streets, McTell favored the [[twelve-string guitar]] whose greater volume made it suitable for outdoor playing. In the years before [[World War II]], McTell traveled and performed widely, recording for several labels under different names: Blind Willie McTell for [[Victor Recording Company|Victor]] and [[Decca Records|Decca]], Blind Sammie for [[Columbia Records|Columbia]], Georgia Bill for [[Okeh Records|Okeh]], Hot Shot Willie for Victor, Blind Willie for [[Vocalion Records|Vocalion]] and [[Bluebird Records|Bluebird]], Barrelhouse Sammie for [[Atlantic Records|Atlantic]], and Pig & Whistle Red for [[Regal Records (1949)|Regal Records]].<ref name="Devil">{{cite book|title=The Devil's Music|author=Giles Oakley|publisher=[[Da Capo Press]]|pages=[https://archive.org/details/devilsmusichisto00oakl_0/page/125 125/7]|isbn=978-0-306-80743-5|date=1997|url=https://archive.org/details/devilsmusichisto00oakl_0/page/125}}</ref> The name "Pig & Whistle" was a reference to a chain of barbecue restaurants in Atlanta;<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pignwhistle.net/history|title=Pig'n Whistle {{!}} Pig'n Whistle Georgia History|website=Pignwhistle.net|access-date=May 10, 2019}}</ref> McTell often played for tips in the parking lot of a Pig 'n Whistle restaurant. He also played behind a nearby building that later became Ray Lee's Blue Lantern Lounge. 

McTell married Ruth Kate Williams,<ref name="NGE"/> now better known as [[Kate McTell]], in 1934. She accompanied him on stage and on several recordings before becoming a nurse in 1939. For most of their marriage, from 1942 until his death, they lived apart, she in [[Fort Gordon]], near Augusta, and he working around Atlanta.

In 1940, John Lomax, a [[Classics]] professor at the [[University of Texas at Austin]] and his wife, [[Ruby Terrill Lomax]], interviewed and recorded McTell for the [[Archive of American Folk Song]] of the [[Library of Congress]] in a two-hour session held in their hotel room in Atlanta.<ref name="Russell 3">{{cite book|first=Tony|last=Russell|year=1997|title=The Blues: From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray|publisher=Carlton Books|location=Dubai|page=13|isbn=1-85868-255-X}}</ref> These recordings captured McTell's distinctive musical style which bridges the gap between the country blues of the early part of the 20th century and the more conventionally melodious, [[ragtime]]-influenced East Coast, Piedmont blues sound. The Lomaxes also elicited from him traditional songs (such as [[Boll Weevil (song)|"The Boll Weevil"]] and [[John Henry (folklore)#Music|"John Henry"]]) and spirituals (such as "[[Amazing Grace]]"),<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/afc9999005.12068/ |title=Audio Recording: Amazing Grace |website=loc.gov |date=November 1940 |publisher=Library of Congress |access-date=July 29, 2019}}</ref> which were not part of his usual repertoire. In the interview, John Lomax is heard asking if McTell knows any "complaining" songs (an earlier term for [[protest song]]s), to which he replies somewhat uncomfortably and evasively that he does not. The Library of Congress paid McTell $10, the equivalent of $154.56 in 2011, for this two-hour session.<ref name=green /> The material from this 1940 session was issued in 1960 as an LP and later as a CD under the somewhat misleading title ''The Complete Library of Congress Recordings'' notwithstanding the fact that it omitted some of Lomax's interactions showing kindness to him and entirely omitting the contributions of Ruby Terrill Lomax.{{refn|group=note|McTell's biographer [[Michael Gray (author)|Michael Gray]] attributes these omissions to the folklore archivist Rae Korson, who was evidently hostile to his [[New Deal]] folklore predecessors at the library: "The widely sold version of the McTell-Lomax sessions deletes conversations and information, removes Ruby Lomax from the room almost entirely, making John Lomax seem to monopolize things and keep her silent which he doesn't at all, and robs Lomax of several touches of warmth and humanity, including questions asked by Ruby Terrill and John Lomax."{{sfn|Gray|2009|p=273}}}}

[[Ahmet Ertegun]] visited Atlanta in 1949 in search of blues artists for this new [[Atlantic Records]] label and after finding McTell playing on the street, arranged a recording session. Some of the songs were released on 78 rpm discs but sold poorly. The complete session was released in 1972 as ''Atlanta Twelve-String''. McTell recorded for [[Regal Records (1949)|Regal Records]] in 1949 but these recordings also met with less commercial success than his previous works. He continued to perform around Atlanta but his career was cut short by ill health, mostly due to [[diabetes]] and [[alcoholism]]. In 1956, an Atlanta record store owner, Edward Rhodes, discovered McTell playing in the street for quarters and enticed him into his store with a bottle of bourbon where he captured 13 songs on a tape recorder which [[Prestige Records]]/[[Bluesville Records]] posthumously released as his ''Last Session''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://bluesnet.hub.org/readings/mctell.html|title=Blind Willie McTell|publisher=bluesnet|access-date=November 17, 2006|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100420180950/http://bluesnet.hub.org/readings/mctell.html|archive-date=April 20, 2010}}</ref> From 1957 to 1959, McTell was a preacher at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Atlanta.<ref name="NGE"/>

Blind Willie McTell died of a stroke in [[Milledgeville, Georgia]], in 1959, at the age of 61. He was buried at Jones Grove Church, near Thomson, Georgia, his birthplace. Author [[David Fulmer]], who in 1992 was working on ''Blind Willie's Blues'', a documentary about McTell, arranged to have a blue marble gravestone erected on his resting place.{{cn|date=May 2025}} McTell was inducted into the [[Blues Foundation]]'s [[Blues Hall of Fame]] in 1981<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.blues.org/halloffame/inductees.php4?YearId=24 |title=1981 Hall of Fame Inductees|access-date=February 5, 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090210120359/http://blues.org/halloffame/inductees.php4?YearId=24 |archive-date=February 10, 2009 }}</ref> and the [[Georgia Music Hall of Fame]] in 1990.<ref name="NGE"/>