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real special kind of person regardless of whether he played blues or not. He was just one of those

unique humans.

BiTS: I, of course, have never met him. Never did meet him but I guess from listening to his music
that he was a man with a what they call these days, a fierce sense of humour.

LRW: He had a great sense
of humour and he was the

funniest he could be with it
too. He really was. He was a
jokester, a smart man.

BiTS: Did you ever meet any

of his compatriots, people he
played with? That kind of
thing.

Libby Rae with Sam Chatmon LRW: Eugene Powell. Eugene
was still living when I was up
there and so he and Eugene played together and so I was around that too. Eugene, Sonny Boy Nelson

is what he recorded under.

BiTS: Did he mentor you on the guitar, Sam?

LRW: He did. At first, I just watched him, and I would go back home and try to play what he was

playing, and I’d come back to him and show him what I was trying to do. The one specific memory I
have that was where he singled me out. We had some friends that had come with us. Well, it was me
and my friend that went to visit him. Some other people had showed up, so there was the five guys
there and me and Sam and they were all “show me this, show me that” and I think he just kind of
got tired of them asking him all these questions and so he just said, “you all go on outta here, I
wanna show her something” [laughing] and he ran them off and then he sat me down and showed

me, to me, a really difficult song and I worked that song and I worked that song and came back to
him and I said, “man, I just can’t play it like you, Sam”. And he said, in his voice, “you ain’t supposed
to play it like me. You ain’t me” [laughing]. I said, “okay, well that’s great cos now the pressure’s
off”.

BiTS: Like I say, I’ve listened to a lot of his work. It took me an age to find out that a lot of his is in
drop D tuning.

LRW: Yeah, and the older he got, he dropped the whole standard tuning down too, for his voice. He
tuned his whole guitar lower as he got older.

BiTS: At what stage, Libby Rae, did you start going out and performing yourself, either with friends

or with other people or what?