Eddie Kirkland, 87, Known as the Gypsy of the Blues, Dies

/Home/Blues News/Blues Obituaries

Eddie Kirkland, 87, Known as the Gypsy of the Blues, Dies
March 6, 2011
Margalit Fox
The New York Times

For more than half a century Eddie Kirkland played the blues, and for much of that time he seemed to have known the blues firsthand.
Enlarge This Image

Linda Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos
Eddie Kirkland at the Roots of American Music Festival at Lincoln Center last July.
Blog


ArtsBeat
The latest on the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia extravaganzas and much more. Join the discussion.
More Arts News
As a child, he was poor in the Jim Crow South. As an adult, he lived through the deaths of several children, including the murder of the niece he had reared as a daughter. By his own account, he also survived two shootings and spent time on a chain gang.

A guitarist, singer, songwriter and harmonica player, Mr. Kirkland performed with some of the greatest names in blues and soul, including John Lee Hooker and Otis Redding. But he remained somewhat in the shadow of the stars, not as widely known as they and not remotely as well off. (Both conditions, by all accounts, were fine with him.)

He kept a rigorous touring schedule. Until several years ago, he spent more than 40 weeks a year on the road; more recently, he toured two weeks out of every four. His itinerant life long ago earned him the nickname the Gypsy of the Blues.

Mr. Kirkland died on Feb. 27, at 87, in a Tampa, Fla., hospital, from injuries sustained in an automobile accident as he drove between gigs that morning.

According to a spokeswoman for the Florida Highway Patrol, Mr. Kirkland turned into the path of a Greyhound bus on a highway in Homosassa, Fla. No one aboard the bus was injured.

A longtime resident of Macon, Ga., he had known a life of struggle but also, in his vibrant telling, picaresque adventure. Some adventures can be confirmed. Others may have been part of the mythology that seemed to swirl around Mr. Kirkland — he was known as a charismatic teller of tall tales — and that long infused accounts of his life in the news media.

What is certain is that in the course of a career that began in the 1930s, Mr. Kirkland became known for his impassioned singing; wailing guitar lines (he was among the first to bring blues guitar into the electric age); vibrant stage presence (he favored bravura headgear like turbans and huge bandannas); and boundless energy, expressed not only musically but also acrobatically. (During at least one performance with the British rock band Foghat, Mr. Kirkland did a back somersault while continuing to play the guitar.)

His many albums include “It’s the Blues Man!,” “Have Mercy” and “Democrat Blues.”

Edward Kirkland was born, he said, to a 12-year-old mother on Aug. 16, 1923; his birth took place in either Dothan, Ala. (according to his family), or in Kingston, Jamaica (according to him). In either case, he was known to have been living in Dothan by the time he was a small child.

He took up his instruments as a boy. When he was 12, as he told it, he joined a traveling medicine show, dancing and playing the harmonica.

Mr. Kirkland is known to have made his way to Detroit in the 1940s, and it was there that he honed his skills as a blues guitarist. By day, he worked on the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company. By night, he performed at Detroit’s lively round of house parties, where he met Hooker, with whom he would collaborate for a number of years. Mr. Kirkland later toured for several years as Redding’s bandleader.

As a songwriter, Mr. Kirkland was best known for his twin singles “The Hawg,” Parts 1 and 2, written under the name Eddie Kirk. Issued by Volt Records in the 1960s, they are explosively danceable and feature his moaning harmonica and guitar, plus vigorous grunting.

Mr. Kirkland moved to Georgia in the early 1950s. Sometime afterward, he later said, he killed a man in self-defense. He was sentenced to three years in prison, which, in his telling, included work on a chain gang.

In other incidents, Mr. Kirkland said, he was shot in the head — which he described as having cost him sight in one eye and hearing in one ear — and in the knee.

In 1998, as confirmed by local news accounts, Mr. Kirkland’s 15-year-old niece, Monica McNeal, whom he and his wife had raised, was abducted and murdered in Macon.

Mr. Kirkland’s first wife, the former Ida Mae Shoulders, died before him. Survivors include his second wife, Mary; five daughters from his first marriage, Jo Ann, Jerdien, Bernette, Marlene and Vernadine; two sons from his first marriage, Charles Edward and Oldlan; three daughters from his second marriage, Dixie Renee, Yvette and Mary; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Two other daughters, Betty Ann and Jacqueline, also died before him.

Through everything, Mr. Kirkland kept on playing. His own hard times, he often observed, were the wellspring of his art. Those of others kept him in business.

“Sometime in your life you’re gonna need the blues,” Mr. Kirkland told The St. Petersburg Times in 1999. “You been left by a girl? You had bad luck? Listening to the blues’ll help you overcome your troubles. As long as people got trouble, I’ll still be playing the blues.”

	Andy S. says:	2011-03-20 00:09:55
	Rest in Peace Bro!!!!U da Man!!!

	Maritza says:	2011-09-24 08:23:22
	My 8 year old son played guitar at his funeral.