Interview Project
Interview with Nat Reese

By Scott Perry

NR: You know the Blues Quarterly magazine that comes from in West Virginia?

SP: I do.

NR: I helped Bob Vorell start that magazine.

SP: Well, I was going to say when I wanted to do some research about you, the only one I found was in BRQ, back in the old days, back when it was in newsprint.

NR: That’s right.

SP: So I got some preliminary information from that. Have you done any other interviews for LB or any of the other blues magazines?

NR: Yeah, Living Blues magazine down in Mississippi.

SP: Uh huh.

NR: They wrote me up in about 3 or 4 different magazines.

SP: Oh good, so I could find more information there, too.

NR: Yeah, I’m trying to think of the guy in England that’s got a music magazine over there. He put me in 3 or 4 different write-ups.

SP: Have you spent any time playing in Europe?

NR: Yeah, I just came back from Belgium not too long ago, a few days ago.

SP: Oh, wow.

NR: Yeah. I’ve been playing in Belgium, we have travelling blues concerts. There’s about eight of us, we travel for about 2 or 3 weeks or more over there.

SP: Who are some of the other performers that you’re playing with?

NR: John Cephas, Phil Wiggins, John Jackson wasn’t with us that time. I’m trying to think of some of the other guys. Alvin was his name.

SP: Alvin? Alvin Youngblood Hart?

NR: Yeah.

SP: I just interviewed John Jackson a few months ago for the same magazine.

NR: John Jackson, that’s my buddy.

SP: Well, he says the same about you.

NR: (Chuckling) That’s John, my boy.

SP: He’s absolutely wonderful.

NR: Me and him are the same age. We went up to Elkins, up to Augusta, I helped him when they put the first show on up there. I’ve been playing up there every year for about, I guess, sixteen years.

SP: Oh, wow. Are you exclusively doing a solo performance now, or do you do things with a band as well?

NR: There’s about 3 or 4 guys I can play with around Princeton, around Bluefield (WV). But they’ve got farms, they’ve got jobs and so, when I go overseas they punish me, with a keyboard player, bass player or a drummer sometimes with a keyboard player, otherwise I just do solo work.

SP: I haven’t seen your show yet, but I read in Blues Review, you started off in sort of a big band, swing, jazz combo.

NR: Sure did.

SP: Do you still incorporate some of that into what you do now?

NR: I do that, yeah, I mix some of the old jazz and swing music in with the music that I do now. The first piece that I did the other day, was a piece that I learned when I first started playing at Bluefield State College. Over there they call it the state collegiate at that time. That was when Bluefield State was all colored. They had a 23 piece band, and I played with them about, I guess, eight or nine years.

SP: Oh, wow.

NR: Then we got to impress them with Gen Rollins from Bluefield State, the of a small town. We had a 5 piece band, stayed together for 14 years.

SP: Was that a road band?

NR: That was a road band, but it was more of a jazz and swing band. At the same time I did gospel work with one of two gospel groups around.

SP: What would be some of the songs from your repertoire at that period?

NR: Might Be Some Changes Made, Exactly Like You, and let’s see, I’ve got a whole list of them but it’s hard to try to think of them…Stardust, Tea for Two, Blue Moon, In My Solitude.

SP: Were you playing guitar exclusively in that band?

NR: Yes, but I played piano with it for a while.

SP: I know you played piano and then I read in your interview with Blues Review, you played something called the tipple. What is the tipple?

NR: A smaller guitar with ten strings.

SP: Ten strings.

NR: Uh huh. You chord it using the same chord formation and note with the chords as you do for a ukelele.

SP: Okay. So, it’s fingered differently than a guitar is, I know you play the ukelele some, too.

NR: The tipple is the same as the ukelele only it has about six more strings.

SP: Does it give it more like a mandolin sound to it?

NR: No, it’s the most beautiful sound you ever heard, it’s prettier than a mandolin and I love mandolin music. Yeah.

SP: When I was asking people about you, one person that I asked was Lighting Wells from North Carolina. I don’t know if you know Lighting, but I said how would you classify Nat’s music? He said "Well, I think of him sort of a swing guy". Then I asked Roddy here at the [Ferrum] college, what do you think of Nat’s music? He said "Well, I think of him as sort of a songster kind of guy". What does Nat Reese classify himself as?

NR: An entertainer. That’s exactly, that’s me. I play them all. I play some country pieces, too. I play Good Old Moutain Dew, Cheatin’ Heart, all those kinds of songs. I picked them up off the radio because when I was young Grand Old Opry had just started. There wasn’t any t.v. then, you’d do good to find a radio.

SP: Uh huh.

NR: On the coal jobs down there, my Dad finally got a Philco radio and every Saturday night at 9:00 I’d listen to Deford Bailey, String Dean, Doffle (sp?) Smith, all those groups was on the old Grand Old Opry.

SP: Right.

NR: I didn’t know, oh I guess, until I was going to high school then that Deford Bailey was colored. I didn’t know. I thought all of them were colored. (NR and SP laughing) They had a mixture of colored people, that was back during the time when Jim Crow was on, you know.

SP: Right.

NR: Down my way I played with a lot of white bands down there, college bands from xx college, around in Athens, West Virginia. That was back when a lot of the people if they were having a band, they wouldn’t have it if they had a colored guy with him. And did you know I didn’t know that it’s still going on, but you just barely find it in maybe one place out of a thousand.

SP: Uh huh.

NR: But right next to me there was a place called Det left, there was a white boy, friend of mine comes into my house yesterday and stayed about three hours. I was taught him blues on the harmonica. He was saying that the guy hired him and his brother to play, and when he told him that he had a bass player that was colored, he say we can’t use you.

SP: This was just recently?

NR: That was about five days ago.

SP: Wow.

NR: I mean this is xxxxxxx from me playing at the radio stations, the T.V. stations, xxx and I mean you can get some surprises that will get you man, and I’ve been around since, oh, 1934 and this I didn’t know, right there in xxxx town name.

SP: This was in West Virginia, where you live now?

NR: In West Virginia. Another thing I can tell you is that the organization was the Moose Club.

SP: And they wouldn’t let this band play, because they had a colored bass player?

NR: Wouldn’t let them.

SP: Did you notice back in that time that maybe because you were a musician you didn’t have as many problems with prejudice or was it the same, or was it just the way things were and you didn’t think about this?

NR: I think you already know this. It ain’t no xxxx the way things were, or the way things is, it was fixed that way by somebody. It wasn’t a thing that was already on or created, somebody started it and people have to stop it. Until you clean up man’s heart, laws are not going to change.

SP: Amen. Do you feel being a musician you get to connect with people in a different way, in a bigger way than maybe you would if you were not a musician to help change that?

NR: No, I think just living and treating people the way that you think you would like them to treat you, and everybody else doing the same thing. It takes a village to help change these things. Until time comes, and I think there is a set time for it to be brought as close as it will get, I don’t think you’ll ever find this world in a position where you won’t find somebody that has an ill feeling on account of someone’s color or the way they speak. These same people make fun of another person and they can be white, that has a limp or deformed leg, it’s a certain type of people that do that. But you don’t think the whole world would say XXX mush (?).

SP: Do you find any difference in the way people treat you here as opposed to when you go over to Europe and play over there, do you feel more accepted?

NR: Oh yes, I’m more accepted over there. I’m really accepted in the United States, everywhere I’ve ever played, California, Arizona, Philadelphia, Washington D.C, wherever. Everybody always treats me nice. I got through playing in Greenwood, Mississippi last year and I never really realized there was any difference. I know it had been for years because my mother and father were born in Alabama and xxxx before they headed to West Virginia.

SP: It sounds like you’re staying really busy.

NR: I am.

SP: I subscribe to Living Blues, Blues Access and Blues Review and you mentioned that Living Blues and Blues Review have both done articles on you. Do you find that you’re happy with your level of exposure and you’re where you are as far as being a recognized national act?

NR: I like being a musician. If you can get a little more exposure, you want it. It doesn’t hurt.

SP: Sure (NR and SP chuckling). I heard that.

NR: After you pay your dues and go through the rough part, you like to get a little bit of the sweet part.

SP: You getting enough of the sweet part? Because you certainly paid your dues.

NR: Well, I’m not a real easy guy to irritate, but I don’t know, I go along with the world. I don’t stand to be pushed too far but I never had any arguments with folks in this world. I only had a fight with three people in my life and that was back in high school days.

SP: Are you handling all of your own business?

NR: Right now. I do some of it and some of it I get done by Howard Armstrong, I know you’ve heard of him.

SP: Sure.

NR: We played together for about five or six years. A little music and he was our agent for a pretty good while.

SP: I could tell by the article that he wrote about you in that early edition, that he was really knocked out by you as a musician and as a person.

Interview cut short by faulty tape! More coming