[Deathwatch] John Cephas, musician, 78

[Deathwatch Central]

March 8, 2009
John Cephas, Guitarist With the Duo Cephas and Wiggins, Dies at 78
By BEN SISARIO

John Cephas, a guitarist and singer who kept the Piedmont blues style
alive as part of the duo Cephas and Wiggins, died on Wednesday at his
home in Woodford, Va. He was 78.

The cause was pulmonary fibrosis, his companion, Lynn Volpe, said.

Less celebrated than the raw Delta blues of Mississippi or its
electrified offshoot in Chicago, the jaunty and melodic Piedmont sound
developed in the coastal plains of Virginia and the Carolinas.
Characterized by a lilting rhythm and complex fingerpicking guitar, it
has echoes of ragtime and perhaps older music as well; some scholars
trace its origins to the country dance bands of the colonial era.

Since teaming with the harmonica player Phil Wiggins in 1977, Mr.
Cephas had been one of Piedmont style’s most prominent exponents,
winning a National Heritage Fellowship in 1989 from the National
Endowment for the Arts. Cephas and Wiggins were regulars at music
festivals around the world.

With a mellow baritone shaped by his early years in gospel groups, Mr.
Cephas sang folk and blues standards like “John Henry” and “Key to the
Highway,” as well as original pieces he wrote with Mr. Wiggins. He
picked guitar in the banjolike manner he learned from relatives in tiny
Bowling Green, Va., and from records by Blind Boy Fuller and Blind
Blake.

“John had very direct connection with the tradition,” said Barry
Bergey, director of folk and traditional arts for the N.E.A. “He’s one
of those figures that bridges the great divide between contemporary
culture and his own personal heritage, dating back to the 1930s and
’40s.”

John Cephas was born in Washington but was reared in Bowling Green, 75
miles to the south, and throughout his life he retained a close
connection to the town. He worked in Washington, as a carpenter at the
armory of the Army National Guard, but he built his house in Woodford,
just outside of Bowling Green.

After playing with the barrelhouse piano player Big Chief Ellis for a
few years, Mr. Cephas met Mr. Wiggins in 1976 at the Smithsonian
Folklife Festival in Washington. The two soon began playing together as
a guitar-harmonica duo, like the best-known modern Piedmont players,
Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, whose careers stretched from the ’40s
to the ’60s.

Mr. Cephas and Mr. Wiggins released their first few albums together
through a German label, L+R, and their American breakthrough came with
“Dog Days of August,” which won a W. C. Handy Award in 1987 for best
traditional blues album.

The duo went on to record more than a dozen albums, most recently
“Richmond Blues,” released last year by Smithsonian Folkways. Their
last performance was in November in Ashland, Va., a short drive from
Bowling Green.

In addition to Ms. Volpe, his survivors include nine children.

Mr. Cephas was an enthusiastic advocate for Piedmont blues. Cephas and
Wiggins traveled widely overseas as part of tours sponsored by the
United States Agency for International Development, and the group’s
performances were punctuated by Mr. Cephas’s avuncular lessons in blues
history.

“The music itself, played in the technique that we play it, when people
hear, it is so emotionally captivating,” he told The Washington Post in
an interview 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 instant emotional appeal, and people all over, wherever
they heard it, they’re just drawn to it.”

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary