SYLVESTER WEAVER
Sylvester Weaver was the first man to record a Blues guitar instrumental, and his recordings with Sara Martin in 1923 were the first songs where a Blues singer was accompanied by a single guitar. Sylvester’s work on guitar and banjo were very influential in all kinds of Blues and Country music, but at the age of 30, he retired suddenly and never performed in public again.
A native of Louisville KY, Sylvester was born in 1897, but little else is known about his early life.
Sylvester’s influential ‘Guitar rag’;
[weaver_youtube http://youtu.be/plsT3v5tlg4 id=videoid sd=0 percent=100 ratio=0.5625 center=1 rel=1 https=0 privacy=0]
After a series of guitar and banjo instrumental releases, in 1927 Sylvester revealed a fine singing voice on ‘True Love Blues’, and then teamed up for a while with another singing guitarist Walter Beasley. They would sing and play on each others records, and had a couple of releases as Weaver and Beasley. [stextbox id=”custom” caption=”Sylvester Weaver Discography” float=”true” align=”left” width=”300″]This is a mainly instrumental collection of 22 Blues and Rags, which show off Sylvester’s amazing style on slide and fingerpicking guitar and banjo. Vol.2 has his solo singing and his work with Helen Humes and Walter Beasley
SYLVESTER WEAVER 1
[/stextbox]Their ‘Hungry Blues’ is a gruesome tale of a tapeworm, and it was almost the last thing Sylvester recorded, because after December 1927 he returned to Louisville and seems to have given up music completely. When he passed away in his hometown in 1960, the world was getting ready to hold up these pioneers of country Blues as the forefathers of modern rock music. When he slid a knife along the strings of his guitar, Sylvester could have had no idea of the monster he was unleashing: Elmore James, Jimmy Page, George Thorogood and thousands more came stomping in his footsteps.