Biography

I Do Just What I Do is a musical expression with more than a little panache. Eleanor Ellis has recorded some very fine, musically superb albums over the years. This feels different. This record is an expression of love for those who mentored her and took her on stage with them. This is her rhapsody, her magnum opus. When listening to it, you metaphysically bond with all the musicians who loved and embraced her. This is her love note back to them, an album in a class by itself. If Eleanor Ellis had never recorded anything before and after this album, it would not matter. I Do Just What I Do is her ultimate masterpiece, the work of a mature artist who is solidly confident and on top of her game.

Not long after arriving in the D.C. area in 1976, Eleanor Ellis was befriended and mentored by the great local players John Jackson, John Cephas, Phil Wiggins and Archie Edwards. Back then, the African American acoustic blues of Washington, D.C., was based in and around Archie’s original famous barbershop. Eleanor and gospel street-musician Flora Molton were the first women to be fully embraced by this vibrant local acoustic blues scene. It is a testament to the openness and inclusiveness of the D.C. musical elders to embrace a young white Southern woman with a thick Louisiana dialect as one of their own. There was and is something special in the regional D.C. blues and it comes back to the personalities of the old masters. By now, the brilliant chanteuse has been an important member of the D.C. roots & blues community for nearly 50 years.

The elders left us, one by one, and Eleanor carried on. The harmonica ace Phil Wiggins was her frequent musical partner after John Cephas died. He frequently told this writer how much he adored Eleanor and how he totally loved playing with her. As we just lost the great Phil Wiggins, hearing his fascinating duets on this album with Eleanor warm the heart. Now that Phil has also passed, Eleanor is the elder carrying on the tradition, along with friends like Neil Harpe, who is also featured on this album.

As you will hear, Eleanor Ellis is an unparalleled interpreter of traditional songs who sourced her voices and rhythms to her acoustic blues predecessors. The word “legendary” is thrown around excessively nowadays, but here is a folk-roots artist who truly deserves that adjective. Eleanor Ellis is indeed a legendary acoustic blues picker, one of the finest living performers in the genre. There are very few authentic voices with this fluid command of alternating bass fingerpicking styles. She plays with a natural elegance, a swift fluency, always reflecting a sense of beauty in the music, expressive with feeling. Eleanor sings with a rich, strong voice coupled with exquisite, refined guitar picking, and a wide-ranging song repertoire of the regional blues traditions.

She brings you to a temporal interim where only music can take you. A proud, joyous, beautiful place.



Frank Matheis
Music, Arts & Culture Writer
Contributing writer to Living Blues magazine and formerly to Blues Access.
Publisher and Editor thecountryblues.com