Beverly Guitar Watkins - Don T Mess With Miss Watkins + Video

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01-beverly guitar watkins-too many times.
02-beverly guitar watkins-miz dr feelgood.
03-beverly guitar watkins-impeach me baby.
04-beverly guitar watkins-red mama blues.
05-beverly guitar watkins-the right string but the wrong yoyo.
06-beverly guitar watkins-right dont wrong nobody.
07-beverly guitar watkins-get out on the floor.
08-beverly guitar watkins-late bus blues.
09-beverly guitar watkins-back in business.
10-beverly guitar watkins-sugar baby swing.
11-beverly guitar watkins-baghdad blues.
12-beverly guitar watkins-jesus walked the water.

Georgia-based guitarist, singer and songwriter Beverly "Guitar" Watkins is one part soul singer, one part rockin' roadhouse mama and one part gifted songwriter. She's also been chronically under-recorded, for a woman with her resume': she spent the early 1960's playing rhythm guitar with Piano Red & The Interns. She recorded with Piano Red from 1959 until the mid-1960's, and can be heard on his popular singles, "Doctor Feelgood" and "Right String But the Wrong Yo Yo." Watkins learned guitar and got her earliest musical sensibilities from several of her aunts, who had a quartet named the Hayes Family. She also had a banjo playing grandfather, Luke Hayes. On holidays, at family get-togethers, these musicians would assemble and the blues and gospel was passed on in a true folk process to the young Watkins. Watkins was born in Atlanta, but after the passing of her grandfather when she was 12, she and her grandmother moved to Commerce, Ga. Watkins earliest influences would included Rosetta Tharpe, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Memphis Minnie, and she was exposed to the music because of her grandmother, who would play their recordings on the family Grammophone. She began playing guitar as an 8-year-old, learning by listening to the records her mother would play for her. Later, she was exposed to the records of the touring bands, including Louis Jordan and Count Basie. She began to model her playing after Charlie Byrd and Basie's rhythm guitarist, Freddie Green. Through high school back in Atlanta, she played a variety of talent shows and played trumpet in the school band. Her high school band master helped broaden her knowledge of jazz and blues guitar and piano. After a succession of bands through high school, she settled in with playing with Piano Red, who later changed their name and found their widest appeal, as Piano Red and the Houserockers, which led to bookings outside Atlanta and northern Florida in cities like Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C.
In the 1965, the band broke up, but not before going through several more name changes. Watkins then hooked up with Eddie Tigner and the Ink Spots and toured extensively with that group, playing for nearly a year with him before he was felled by a stroke. Watkins came off the road and took a break from the brutal touring [in buses and cars] that she had done for much of the 1960's. She worked a procession of day jobs as a domestic and in car washes before joining Leroy Redding and the Houserockers. Watkins worked on and off with Redding until the late 1980's, before striking out on her own and creating a residency for herself at Underground Atlanta, an Atlanta nightclub, often accompanied by her son on bass and a drummer. Here, she developed her singing and harmonica-playing skills. "Back In Business," her solo debut album, was released in 2001 as part of the Music Maker Series distributed by Sire Records Group/ Warner Bros. The album showcases Watkins' flexibility and prowess in a wide range of styles: roadhouse blues, jazz-inflected blues and rockabilly-blues. Now in her 60's, Watkins continues to perform in Atlanta-area blues clubs and at major festivals around the U.S.. She put in a particularly compelling, energetic performance at the 2000 Chicago Blues Festival. ~ Richard Skelly, All Music Guide