South Carolina Rag

South Carolina Rag 3:02

Contact info:
Andy Cohen
twangoleum@outlook.com
901.232.6694

Songwriter: Willie Walker
Publisher & PRO: Copyright Control, Publisher Unknown

Release Date: March 15, 2024

Originally from Cleveland, Rolly Brown has a long history with the still active Northeast Ohio scene. In his twenties, after moving around some, he settled in Philadelphia, PA and came to be one of the pillars of that scene too. Here he covers Willie Walker’s most famous piece.

Willie was another blind man from Greenville, South Carolina, a few years older than Gary Davis Davis. They met when Davis was a ten-year-old prodigy. Willie taught Blind Gary his versions of Cincinnati Flow (Slow Drag), Maple Leaf Rag, and many other tunes, and had the little blind kid in a serenading group that played up and down the street on Friday nights. Willie's teaching would be Gary Davis’s only childhood instruction until he went to Blind School in Spartanburg, c. 1912. It was at Blind School that Davis formalized his internal understanding of harmony.