One-String on WXPN
by Jonny Meister, Host/Producer of The Blues Show on WXPN
Spring 1975
It was 1975. WXPN was playing on the radio in my basement apartment, and a record came on that changed my life. There was a street musician describing how he made his instrument out of stuff recovered from the trash.
Eddie One-String Jones was a street person on LA’s skid row; he was recorded in early 1960 by someone who came across him and his one-string and was fascinated. One-String Jones got some amazing sound out of that old broom wire strung above a two-by-four. The album was called “One String Blues”. I bought three copies, leaving two unopened in the shrink wrap & playing the hell out of the other one. One-String had his own wacky music theory with notes like “Big D” and “Little E”; I tried to translate it to more conventional theory before finally having the sense to give up.
One-String totally inspired me. He was a street person, but seemed happy, ebullient, proud of his music. I was in my mid-twenties & utterly lost about what to do in life. I thought I might end up a street person sometimes — I tell people that now, & they don’t believe me. I have a good job, a home, four kids…. but that all seems a wondrous miracle to me. My parents were extremely unhappy with me, & we couldn’t communicate. Turns out One-String had some of the same problems, though he defined success very differently from me. He said, “I made it too! You see I’m here, don’t you? You see I ain’t dead.”
In the course of recording Eddie One-String Jones, his discoverers found harmonica player Edward Hazelton, a great player, but someone whose depressed mood was probably more typical of skid row dwellers than One-String’s. Hazelton touched my heart, but One-String soon inhabited my soul. I realized how much great music was out there that wasn’t getting promoted, how disappointed I was with pop music, how much I wanted to be part of telling people about musicians like One-String. I got involved with WXPN because of One-String, thinking it would always be just a volunteer thing… somehow, it became a career.
One-String drifted away a few weeks after being recorded in 1960. He wasn’t looking for a role in the folk revival. The liner notes on the album said his instrument was sitting on top of the piano at his discover’s home. The CD reissue said they had lost track of the instrument. How could they do that I thought… I wanted it! It was the holy grail of blues for me… but now, I think that it was probably right for it to return to the trash from whence it came. A picture of it does live on my computer’s desktop, & One-String’s unique blues echoes in my mind all the time.
Listen to Jonny Meister talk about One-String by clicking on the audio link, below:
