The Greatest Blues Song

Elvie Thomas
2 x 2 feet, oil on panel, 2018

In April of 2013 a remarkable article appeared in the New York Times. It is the story of a journalist, Jeremiah Sullivan, who traced and identified the two women responsible for the song Last Kind Word Blues. The song, recorded in 1930, had mesmerized blues aficionados the world over, but who the musicians Geechie Wiley and L.V. Thomas were, nobody really knew. That song, Last Kind Word Blues, my number one in the Top 100 1999, I have now decided is the greatest blues song ever recorded, inching out Prisoner's Talking Blues by Robert Pete Williams, Hellhound on My Trail by Robert Johnson, and I Be's Trouble by McKinley Morganfield (Muddy Waters.) The painting I'm working on is not much different from one I did before. It's from the only known photo that exist of Elvie Thomas (1891-1979). The photo was taken by Robert "Mack" McCormick, who had spent a good deal of life investigating the identities of the performers. John Jeremiah Sullivan then started his research where McCormick left off. Geeshie (as it should be spelled) Wiley (1908-after mid 1950s) is Lilly Mae Scott, no photograph of her ever surfaced. After meticulously painting Wiley's portrait from that one photo, I was at a loss of how to proceed with that great open space left on the panel. I had ideas before I started but each was rejected in the process. I felt frustrated, angered, and anxious about it and angrily filled in the white spaces. Rather than going back into it and 'fix' these negative emotions I figured I'd leave it, at least for now.