Pink-Floyd – From The Roots Of Acoustic Blues Guitar
February 3rd, 2011
My favorite classic blues performers are mostly unknown Funnily enough, the three guitarists featured here came from Carolina . Floyd Council, Pink Anderson ( Pink Floyd borrowed their names ) and Scrapper Blackwell.
Floyd Council wasn’t really well known as a guitarist in his own right, but often played in studio sessions providing backing guitar for ‘stars’ like Blind Boy Fuller, a fellow South Carolina blues man . His technique was syncopated and was a combination of Piedmont ragtime and a Texas blues style.
Pink Anderson (I don’t think they ever collaborated or even crossed each other’s path !) was a ragtime player and performed in wandering medicine shows.
Scrapper Blackwell was an incredibly varied guitar player who produced several memorable pieces , like Blues Before Sunrise and Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.
His creation ‘Kokomo Blues’ was made famous by Robert Johnson under the name ‘Sweet Home Chicago’. Scrapper provided classics which were to provide inspiration for later masters of blues music.
Floyd Council (Born September 2nd , 1911 and died May 9th , 1976) was a well-known performer of the Piedmont style blues sound, which was popular all through that corner of the US during the nineteen thirties .
He began playing the guitar professionally during the 1920s, performing with the brothers, Leo and Thomas Strowd calling themselves “The Chapel Hillbillies”. He additionally recorded at studio sessions with Blind Fuller during the 30s. His muscles were partially paralysed after suffering a stroke in the nineteen sixties , but it was reported that his mind was not affected. However , he never recovered his playing talents .
Council died in 1976 after a heart attack, a little while after going to live in Sanford, North Carolina.
Pink Anderson
Pink was born and raised in Greenville South Carolina. After training himself himself in several instruments, he joined Dr. Frank Kerr, who ran a little ‘business’ which was known as the Indian Remedy Company in 1914 to play for the audiences while Kerr tried to sell his home made ‘medicine’.
In the town of Spartanburg, Pink met Simeon “Blind Simmie” Dooley in 1916, who taught him how to finger pick blues guitar – Pink already had a little knowledge, after performing in string bands. When he was not traveling in Dr Kerr’s medicine show , he and Dooley would entertain at small parties . 
Problems with heart eventually forced Anderson to stop travelling in 1957.
He had a stroke in 1954, which forced him to virtually stop playing, and he would never again play with his old flair. He passed on in October 1974, of a heart attack when he was 74. He’s buried in Spartanburg, where he came from. Anderson’s son, who became known as Little Pink Anderson , is a blues guitarist living in Vermillion, South Dakota.
Scrapper Blackwell
Born in Syracuse, Carolina, Scrapper Blackwell had fifteen brothers and sisters . Partly Cherokee Indian , he was raised up and spent most of his life in Indianapolis. He was given the nickname , “Scrapper”, by his grandma , because of his prickly nature. His Dad played the violin , but Scrapper was a self-taught guitarist.
Even when he was a teenager , Blackwell worked as a musician part-time , wandering as far away as Chicago. He was unsociable individual , generally keeping to himself and difficult to be with. However, Blackwell put together a duo with pianist Leroy Carr, whom he ran across in Indiana during the 1920s, which became a productive working relationship.
Blackwell also recorded by himself, including “Kokomo Blues” which became “Old Kokomo Blues” (Kokomo Arnold) before it was transformed again into “Sweet Home Chicago” by Robert Johnson. Blackwell and Carr travelled extensively throughout the mid-west and in the South between 1928 to 1935 – they were the ‘rock stars’ of the blues scene, and they recorded over one hundred tracks.
After Carr’s death , Blackwell went back to playing in the late 1950s and was first recorded in June 1958 by Colin C. Pomroy.
He was ready to resume his blues career when he was shot and killed during a mugging in an alley in Indianapolis . He was 59 years old. Even though the crime was never solved , police took into custody his neighbour for the murder. Scrapper Blackwell is interred in New Crown Cemetery, Indianapolis.
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