Breathing in, breathing out

L.V. Thomas, ink, watercolor, 2021

The song Last Kind Words Blues by Geeshie Wiley and L.V. Thomas has been a recurring feature of many a Top 100 list, lists that I compiled annually since 1983. In the Top 100 of 1999, Last Kind Words Blues was number 1. The song has now entered the top 10 of my all time list, it accumulated 130 points since I started counting in 1983. Listening to it still gives me the chills. In 1999, when it was number one, the two performers were still totally obscure. They had recorded six songs in Wyoming in 1930, three each as leader and three as they accompanied the other. The true identities of the two women were lost in time, while the song, as time advanced, gained mythological status.  In 2014, after many years of research, the New York Times journalist Jeremiah Sullivan was able to track down the identities of the two women. He also positively identified a photograph of L.V. Thomas, the only known image of the singer/guitarist. No photograph is known to exist of Geeshie Wiley. Last Kind Words Blues is number 76 of the Top 100 2020. I have written more about this song on my blog The Top 100. You can find it here.

Namgyal Lhamo, Serge Bourguignon, oil on canvas, 2021

Number 14 form the Top 100 2021 is a Tibetan song recorded in exile in Sikkim in Northern India. The singer of the Song of Shigatse, that appears on La Voz humana en la musica, is anonymous. The well known Tibetan singer Namgyal Lhamo functions as a stand in. She's depicted on the left. The right side is a portrait of the French New Wave film director Serge Bourguignon who is the source of the recording. I'm not sure if he actually recorded the singer in Sikkim or if he simply owned the recording. The date given by Carlos Reynoso in the liner notes of La Voz humana is 1955. Reynoso (as far as I can tell from a sketchy translation of these liner notes) suggests a relationship between the French director and the well known archeologist Erica Bourguignon, who specialized in trance singing. I don't think the two were related and neither does the song evidence a trance state. What is remarkable in the song is the continuous vocalization throughout the inhaling and exhaling of breaths.

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.

Geechie, Elvie, and Me

L.V. Thomas
20" x 16"
oil on board, 2014

★Last Kind Words Blues by Geechie Wiley, accompanied by a certain Elvie Thomas, was the #1 in the Top 100 of 1999.

★The 1994 documentary film Crumb, by Terry Zwigoff introduced me to the song. 

★Robert Crumb owned a 78 disc of the song, one of only 10 discs known to exist of the duo that recorded only six sides.
★Like many others, and myself, the journalist John Jeremiah Sullivan became fascinated with the song after seeing the movie.
★Last Kind Words Blues was recorded in 1930 and is considered a masterpiece. 

★Wiley and Thomas were as obscure as obscure gets. 

★50+ years of researchers' efforts yielded very little information, not even the real names of the two performers.
★John Sullivan set out on a fifteen year journey to uncover the identity of the two women.
★The journey saw the first results when Sullivan met Mack McCormick, a veteran in the field of blues research.
★In McCormick’s files Sullivan found a mention of a woman guitar player “as good as any” named L.V. Thomas.
★Miss Thomas was still alive when McCormick did research on her, this was in 1961. 

★Eventually Sullivan identified the two women. Geeshie (as he spells it) was Lily Mae Wiley, nee Scott, and Elvie was L.V. Thomas, nee Grant.
★Lily May Scott was born in 1908 in Natchez, MS, while L.V. Grant was born in 1891, in Houston, TX.
★L.V. Thomas died in 1979 (in Houston), when Lily Mae Wiley died is not known.
★Lily Mae Scott killed her husband, Thornton Wiley, in 1931.
★Wiley and Thomas were likely involved in a lesbian relationship.