Blues Locations – Georgia – Savannah

Themed Photo Gallery and Information: Savannah, Georgia

Background

Savannah is the oldest city in the U.S. state of Georgia and is the county seat of Chatham County. Established in 1733 on the Savannah River, the city of Savannah became the British colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. A strategic port city in the American Revolution and during the American Civil War, Savannah is today an industrial center and an important Atlantic seaport. It is Georgia’s fifth-largest city, with a 2018 estimated population of 145,862. The Savannah metropolitan area, Georgia’s third-largest, had an estimated population of 389,494 in 2018.

Each year Savannah attracts millions of visitors to its cobblestone streets, parks, and notable historic buildings. These buildings include the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low (founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA), the Georgia Historical Society (the oldest continually operating historical society in the South), the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences (one of the South’s first public museums), the First African Baptist Church (one of the oldest African-American Baptist congregations in the United States), Temple Mickve Israel (the third-oldest synagogue in the U.S.), and the Central of Georgia Railway roundhouse complex (the oldest standing antebellum rail facility in the U.S.).

Savannah’s downtown area, which includes the Savannah Historic District, the Savannah Victorian Historic District, and 22 parklike squares, is one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the United States (designated by the U.S. government in 1966). Downtown Savannah largely retains the original town plan prescribed by founder James Oglethorpe (a design now known as the Oglethorpe Plan). Savannah was the host city for the sailing competitions during the 1996 Summer Olympics held in Atlanta.

General James Edward Oglethorpe, a philanthropist and a representative of King George II to the American colonies, was sent to create a buffer south of the Savannah River to protect the Carolinas from Spanish Florida and French Louisiana.

On February 12, 1733, General James Oglethorpe and settlers from the ship Anne landed at Yamacraw Bluff and were greeted by Tomochichi, the Yamacraws, and Indian traders John and Mary Musgrove. Mary Musgrove often served as an interpreter. The city of Savannah was founded on that date, along with the colony of Georgia. In 1751, Savannah and the rest of Georgia became a Royal Colony and Savannah was made the colonial capital of Georgia.

By the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Savannah had become the southernmost commercial port in the Thirteen Colonies. British troops took the city in 1778, and the following year a combined force of American and French soldiers, including Haitians, failed to rout the British at the Siege of Savannah. The British did not leave the city until July 1782. In December 1804 the state legislature declared Milledgeville the new capital of Georgia.

Savannah, a prosperous seaport throughout the nineteenth century, was the Confederacy’s sixth most populous city and the prime objective of General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea. Early on December 21, 1864, local authorities negotiated a peaceful surrender to save Savannah from destruction, and Union troops marched into the city at dawn.

Savannah was named for the Savannah River, which probably derives from variant names for the Shawnee, a Native American people who migrated to the river in the 1680s. The Shawnee destroyed another Native people, the Westo, and occupied their lands at the head of the Savannah River’s navigation on the fall line, near present-day Augusta. These Shawnee, whose Native name was Ša·wano·ki (literally, “southerners”), were known by several local variants, including Shawano, Savano, Savana and Savannah. Another theory is that the name Savannah refers to the extensive marshlands surrounding the river for miles inland, and is derived from the English term “savanna”, a kind of tropical grassland, which was borrowed by the English from Spanish sabana and used in the Southern Colonies. (The Spanish word comes from the Taino word zabana.) Still other theories suggest that the name Savannah originates from Algonquian terms meaning not only “southerners” but perhaps “salt”

 

Kate McTell

Kate McTell (born Ruthy Kate Williams; August 22, 1911 – October 3, 1991) was an American blues musician and nurse from Jefferson County, Georgia. She is known primarily as the former wife of the blues musician Blind Willie McTell, whom she accompanied vocally on several recordings. She may have recorded as Ruby Glaze, but there is some uncertainty about whether she and Glaze were the same person, despite the fact that she claimed to be Glaze.

Ruthy (later changed to Ruth) Kate Williams was born in Savannah, Georgia. She was singing for a high-school ceremony in Augusta, Georgia, in 1933 when she was noticed by McTell, who regularly performed in the area. In an interview conducted by the musicologist David Evans and his family, she stated that she and Willie met at a Christmas concert at her school in 1931. She went on to explain that Willie invited her to record with him, that they did so in Atlanta over the course of a week, and that she then returned to Augusta to continue her schooling at Paine College. According to Michael Gray, that week of recording would have been in February 1932. The McTells were married on January 11, 1934. For the next six years she often accompanied Willie on stage, singing or dancing, in performances in Chicago, Atlanta and elsewhere, and in the company of artists such as Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. The two were invited to record for Decca Records by executive Mayo Williams in 1935, but the recordings from these sessions had extremely limited releases. In late June 1936, they recorded 12 blues songs with Piano Red for Vocalion Records.

In 1939, she obtained a nursing certificate from Grady Hospital in Atlanta, and from 1942 until 1971 she was an army nurse at Fort Gordon hospital, near Augusta. As Willie lived in Atlanta for his career, the two rarely saw each other and drifted apart. Much of what is known about her husband comes from the interview she gave with the Evans family, published in Blues Unlimited magazine in 1977.

Ten years after her husband’s death in 1959, she married Johnny E. Seabrooks, who was in the military. They had two children, Ernest and April.  She retired from the hospital in 1971. After Seabrooks died in 1976, she lived a fairly private life, except for interviews she gave in 1977, 1979, and 1981 about Willie McTell. She died in Augusta, Georgia, on October 3, 1991.

There is some uncertainty as to whether Ruby Glaze, a singer with whom Willie McTell recorded in 1932, is the same person as Kate McTell. In an interview conducted in the 1970s, she claimed that she was Glaze. The uncertainty stems from confusion over when she first met Willie and whether or not this was after he had recorded with Glaze. Bruce Bastin gave the year of their meeting as 1931, at her graduation from Paine College, in Augusta, Georgia, and stated that immediately afterward she went on to Washington High in Atlanta, which is where and when Willie recorded with Glaze. Bastin also noted the similarities between Glaze’s spoken parts in “Searching the Desert for the Blues” and the ones in the McTells’ recording of “Ticket Agent Blues” in 1935. As mentioned above, McTell told the musicologist David Evans and his family that she had met Willie in late 1931 and that they recorded soon afterward over the course of a week. Gray placed this recording in February 1932. Some sources have claimed that McTell and Glaze are the same person,] while others have claimed that they are not.

Source: Wikipedia

Blind Willie and Kate McTell

Interview with Kate McTell by David Evans in 1977

Scanned from a Blues Unlimited magazine article:  https://sundayblues.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/kate-bu.pdf

 

Georgia Blues Historical Markers

None.

 

Photo Gallery

None relating to the blues (but it was a great place to visit).

This was where we stayed, the Thunderbird Inn, a distictive retro 1960s style roadside motel: