Quotes from
Yank:
"I've had the blues so long they done turned into the blacks".
"No one teach me.
Wasn't no music teacher to teach me anything.
I just take it up myself.
It just comes to me."
"Boom, Boom, Boom - that's all he ever do.
He took one of my songs and went 'Boom, Boom, Boom'
and then he gave me some money
and I said, 'that's real nice, John Lee'"
(Yank Rachell - on John Lee Hooker)
"If anyone don't like the blues, they got a hole in their soul".
"B.B. always give me respect. He honor me 'cause, see, I was in this
business 'fore B. B. was, 'fore his time. See a lot of 'em, like B. B.,
put all his time into playin' music, you see, but I worked. I always
had a job, but I play music on my part-time. But B. B., if I had been
out playin' like he was I been just as famous, or more famous, than he
was. But I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't go out playin' 'cause I
had to take care of my kids and wife.
I play music at night, daytime I work. That the way I do it all the
time."
"That's the only record company I got some money out of. Yeah, Taj
Mahal play 'She Caught The Katy'. His music, what I
heard, is pretty good. He play some different kind of music, but I
liked it."
"Charlie Musselwhite would hear our record and things. That where he
learned to play the blues, that where I first met him. He was just a
kid and I helped bring him up. Used to he couldn't play nothin'.
So three years ago out in California I played with Charlie Musselwhite.
He's a good friend of mine, a good harmonica player."
"I recorded with Bob Koester twice, with Sleepy John, Big Joe Williams,
and Michael Bloomfield and then the next one with Pete Crawford.
Michael Bloomfield was a good guitar picker, but he got to California
and got on that stuff. Killed him."
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Quotes
about Yank:
"He certainly was the man in blues mandolin -- an early pioneer, one of
the greats".
-- David Grisman
"There can be little doubt about the importance of James "Yank" Rachell
in the history of the blues. He is one of only two major blues
mandolinists and the only one to carry that instrument to any degree
into the blues revival scene from the 1960's onward".
-- David Evans The University of Memphis
"Yes I'm very familiar with Yank. He played my mandolin at the
Newport Folk Festival in 1965 (or 6), and came down and jammed when my
band played some small club in Indy years ago."
-- David Grisman
"Yank would restore order if things got out of hand. I thought that
everybody understood that he was the guy that really was the smartest
one of the group. And he was well respected. People always listened
when he started talking. He was looked up to. And he was respected as a
musician too.
I think he deserved more credit than he got. And I think it might have
happened if he hadn't been more devoted to raising his family. He just
had a great spirit about him, really just shouting it out. I wish more
people had known about him. You couldn't have known a better person. A
good heart. If the world was made up of people like Yank Rachell,
It would be a wonderful place to live."
-- Charlie Musselwhite
"Yank's style of blues and mine was similar. That song he made,
'Divin' Duck' I believe was the title, that's the one of Yank's that I
like the best.
Yank was a beautiful person. He was not cantankerous at all, and very
considerate of other people, very easy to get along with. That is why
he and I got along."
-- Henry Townsend
"Everything I play on the mandolin comes from what I was trying to
interpret. When I heard those records I said 'That's for me! That's
what I want to do.' So I went out and got a mandolin and I began
to try to play in that manner"
-- Ry Cooder
"I thought Yank was a wonderful musician. Yes, I think the first time I
heard him play was up at Wolf Trap. All that I remember that Yank
played, he was definitely a blues player, a blues man. That's one thing
that attracted me to him. He was a good mandolin player.
We were nice friends, you know."
--Howard Armstrong
"I first knowed Yank right in that time, '35, '36 when I played with
the Memphis Jug Band. Yank knowed a lot of friends. I liked Yank's
style. Yank was a good blues player. He was a good vocalist, he
sung good too. I like that, a lot of his old songs like 'Divin Duck'.
Yeah, I knowed Yank a long time."
-- Dave "Honeyboy" Edwards
“Yank’s voicings were so imaginative,
in fact, modern, way
ahead of his time -- that I didn’t know what I was listening to
at first. It
seemed just like there was this wonderful quality to the chords that --
this
wonderful, complex quality to the chords that I couldn’t quite
isolate. And
that there were several elements of his particular creativity that I
was
appreciating, before I really knew it was him.”
--
John Sebastian as told to George Fish
Having not grown up with
that tradition ingrained in my mind it was sometimes a bit difficult to follow
Yank's changes. Listening to where his voice was going was usually the best
clue. Sheena, Yank's granddaughter had an
almost psychic knack for following him. Sometimes she would win out on a
particularly odd change and the rest of the band would follow her. In 1991 we
went down and played the Atlanta
Blues Festival at Blind Willie's . In the audience were Sam Lay, John Hammond and Robert Lockwood Jr. among
others. It was quite exciting and intimidating.
On break we went out to the
van to relax and Robert Lockwood Jr.
joined us. After greetings Lockwood turns to Yank and
says, "How old are you, man?"
Yank says,
"Eighteen--That's eighty one backwards!"
We all laughed, then
Lockwood says, "Then you are old enough to know to change when the bass
player changes!"
After much swearing and laughing and accusations as to who really knew how to
play the blues it all ended well. It was quite an experience to hear some of
the greatest originators of blues music arguing about how it should be played
and a relief to learn that I wasn't the only one sometimes confused.
-- Gordon Bonham--Remembrance
of Yank
Tremelo and upstrokes
coupled with raw power and intensity.
Absolutely one of the greatest tremelos in mandolin music regardless of
genre. A tremelo only intensified once
Yank began playing electric mandolin in the late 1950’s. Plaintive, demanding, masculine yet torn down
by the blues. Then the upstroke. If anyone ever watched Yank play guitar—and
he was a great guitarist—he played in that Lightning Hopkins fingered-upstroke style. Using that upstroke approach on mandolin
created a primal tension in his playing unequalled by any other blues
mandolinist. Unlike the clean lines of
Johnny Young or the sophistication of Carl Martin, Yank’s blues were rooted in
raw power and having one foot firmly planted in the country. His blues are untouchable, unique to himself,
and will never be duplicated. The most
we can and should do is pay tribute to him and his music.
-- Jim Richter
Yank Stories
From Mike Butler
From Bix Smith
From
George Fish
Yank Remembered...
Yank Poem, by Scott Brewer