Yank Rachell

Yank Rachell
11" x 8.5", 2013
watercolor, pen on paper

It's totally subjective and by chance how most songs enter a Top 100 list in a given year. How for example Yank Rachell got in it this year is illustrated by the following story: I enjoy it when one of the blogs I follow publishes an item about a record I have myself. It doesn't happen too often because they're all only talking about obscure records but occasionally, maybe once or twice a year, I see a record cover pop up that I also can find on my own shelves. Especially the collection of Ghost Capital seems to have a good amount of overlap with my own. The last crossover occurred in October of 2012, when Ghost Capital posted an item on the record Let's Get Loose, a collection of blues tunes from the beginning up to the 1940s. They included a music file of Peach Tree Blues by Yank Rachelle, that immediately scored enough points to be included in this year's (we're still talking 2012) Top 100. I took the record off the shelf, played, and read all about it. It was the first time for Rachell to be included under his own name, and the first time playing a guitar as well. Other recordings I have by Yank Rachell are as a sideman for Sleepy John Estes. He played mandolin on several Top 100 entries under Estes' name in the past. The harmonica heard in the 1941 recording is played by nobody less than Sonny Boy Williamson.