RIP Piedmont Bluesman John Cephas

RIP Piedmont Bluesman John Cephas
March 5, 2009
The Washington Post

he Foggy Bottom-born blues guitarist and singer from the W.C. Handy Award-winning duo Cephas and Wiggins died of natural causes yesterday at the age of 78. The AP obit is here.

Cephas was a big deal in the blues world -- one of the very last exponents of true, traditional acoustic blues. In 1987, he and harp player Phil Wiggins won the Handy Award for blues entertainer of the year -- an unheard-of honor for a traditional blues act. Two years later, Cephas received an NEA National Heritage Fellowship, a sort of living treasure award for American folk artists.

He was an important figure locally, too, having founded the D.C. Blues Society while carrying the torch for Piedmont-style blues, which are defined by rhythmically complex finger-picked acoustic guitar work.

"The music itself, played in the technique that we play it, when people hear, it is so emotionally captivating," Cephas told The Post in 2003. "You hear that wonderfully melodic, alternating thumb and finger, you just stop and say, 'I want to go hear more of that!' It's an instant emotional appeal, and people all over, wherever they heard it, they're just drawn into it."