Mance Lipscomb
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Mance Lipscomb (April 9, 1895 – January 30, 1976) was an influential blues singer and guitarist. Born Bodyglin Lipscomb near Navasota, Texas, he as a youth took the name of 'Mance' from a friend of his oldest brother Charlie (Mance short for emancipation). Lipscomb was the son of an ex-slave from Alabama and a half Choctaw Indian mother.
Lipscomb spent most of his life working as a tenant farmer in Texas and was "discovered" and recorded by Mack McCormick and Chris Strachwitz in 1960 during the country blues revival. He released quite a few albums of blues and folk music (most of them on Strachwitz' Arhoolie label), singing and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. He had a fine finger-picking guitar technique, and an expressive voice well suited to his material.
Lipscomb's song "Baby, Let Me Lay It On You" was picked up and reworked into "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" by urban folksingers Eric Von Schmidt and Bob Dylan after a New York performance. One of his best songs, "Sugar Babe", was the first song he learned on guitar. Lipscomb performed and recorded a brilliant country blues version of "Shine On, Harvest Moon".
Unlike many of his contemporaries like Blind Blake and Blind Willie McTell his life is well documented and he appeared in several films including the 1971 documentary A Well Spent Life.
Despite his fame in the 1960s and early 1970s he died poor in his hometown of Navasota in 1976, two years after suffering a severe stroke.
[edit] Film
- A Well Spent Life (1971). Directed by Les Blank and Skip Gerson. El Cerrito, California: Flower Films. Released on video in 1979. ISBN 0-933621-09-4.
