Saturday Afternoons with Blues Legend, Sam Chatmon

There are several events that are engrained into the memory of most performers.  There is the time that you step onto a real stage with real spotlights the first time and realize you can’t see beyond the first row.  There is the time you forgot the words of a familiar tune and don’t know where you are, who you are or what you are doing.  And there are times you wish you could view the video tape over and over.

A few of the times I wish I had recorded were spent with Sam Chapmon (sometimes listed as Sam Chatman).  I don’t even have a still photo with Sam.  I met Sam at an entertainer’s conference in Washington D.C. in 1975.   Another entertainer told me he had just met an old man in the lobby of the hotel / convention center.  He said the man was from the Mississippi Delta.  He thought that since I was from Greenville, I may know him.  His name was Sam Chatmon.  I was 19.  Sam was 78.  Nevertheless we became fast friends.  The convention schedule did not allow us to talk much or play together, so we agreed to meet back in the Delta.  Sam had experienced a colorful career.  He worked as a carpenter and played music with his brothers.  His music appears on 43 albums.  Some are solo works.  Some are the Mississippi Sheiks and some are collaborative works.  In his later years he gained notoriety touring with such popular groups as Loggins & Messina.

Sam never flew.  He toured all over the USA, but was a committed bus traveler.  A couple of weeks passed and I called Sam at his home in Hollendale, Mississippi.  It was Saturday morning and he asked me to bring my guitar and we’d play a bit.  Sam was a very soft-spoken man of few words.  My girlfriend, Teresa, and I made the first of three visits to Sam’s home.  Sam’s home was a typical “shotgun” three-room house that was so typical in the Delta.  The front room was the living room.  The middle room as the bedroom and the back room was the kitchen.  Often the bathroom was built onto the back porch.  Sam’s home appears in the album cover of the Mississippi Sheik album.  It was immediately clear that at 77 years old, Sam Chatmon had all the right licks.  He had lived the blues, played the blues and earned the right to sing the blues.  He taught me a lot in those three afternoons.  Mainly not to try to keep-up with my elders.

I was attending college in Louisiana at the time, so my trips to the Mississippi Delta were limited.  On one return visit I called Sam on Saturday morning and asked if we could “play”.  Sam’s voice was a little weaker that morning.  He told me sadly that he had buried his wife earlier in the week.  I felt awkward and was trying to find the reverse switch when Sam suggested, “Why don’t you bring your guitar and Ms. Teresa over this afternoon.  I could use the diversion.”  Sam delivered a thick layer of blues that Saturday afternoon that can only come from personal experience.  Sam passed away in 1983 at the age of 86.

I treasure those moments with Sam.  Neither Teresa nor I took a photo of the Saturday afternoon blues sessions, but every time we see the iconic pictures of Sam with his long flowing white beard, his vintage Gibson with that artificial rose around the headstock, the memories come back.

Sam’s Discography