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The BiTS Interview: Tinsley Ellis

Tinsley Ellis (born June 4, 1957) is an American blues and rock musician, who was born
in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, and grew up in South Florida. According to
Billboard, "…nobody has released more consistently excellent blues albums than
Atlanta's Tinsley Ellis. He sings like a man possessed and wields a mean lead guitar."

Rolling Stone said, "On assertive originals and standards by the likes of Jimmy Reed
and Junior Wells, Atlanta's Tinsley Ellis unleashes feral blues guitar. Nonstop gigging
has sharpened his six-string to a razor's edge…his eloquence dazzles…he also achieves
pyrotechnics that rival early Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton”. Ian McKenzie spoke to him
on-line.

BiTS: Let’s make a start, may we Tinsley? I gather that you were born and bred in Florida. Was
there a lot of music in your house when you were a kid?

TE: Oh, yes. A lot of church music and
my dad liked jazz music quite a bit.

BiTS: When did you first start to be
an instrumentalist and do singing and
that sort of thing?

TE: My beginnings of music were the
first time I ever saw The Beatles on

the Ed Sullivan show here in America.
It was a TV show, and The Beatles
were on in 1964, and that’s when I
decided even when I was only seven
years old, I knew that that’s what I
wanted to do. I knew I wanted to play
guitar like that.

BiTS: I must have done a dozen or so
interviews over the years where
people have mentioned this Ed
Sullivan show performance of The
Beatles. Was it particularly
outstanding? What was it about it that was so attractive?

TE: Well I’d always heard music like that before growing up here in Georgia, but I’d never heard
it done by young people. I’d always heard more of African American, the original versions of that.
That’s just the music of the south and to hear somebody doing it that looked like me. They looked
like me, young, skinny white people doing it and I could relate to it. They sold me on the music
that I’d already heard.

BiTS: Was that what inspired you to go and get a guitar?