Both Leo "Bud" Welch and I are native English speakers, but we still needed a translator during our phone interview. There are barriers to communication between a somewhat hearing-challenged, octogenarian African-American rural gospel-blues guitarist — who's only recently put out a proper debut album and found himself the object of NPR's attention, as it happens — and a white interviewer two generations his junior and conscious of her privileged social location and the fact that her interviewee bore the bigger burden of accommodation. Welch had traveled the 100-plus miles from his home in Bruce, Miss., to his manager Vencie Varnado's place for this interview, where Varnado, unlike Welch, had a landline and could clarify as needed.
The discovery of Welch by the folks at Fat Possum/Big Legal Mess Records and the predominately white collectors of obscure recordings is the latest iteration of a pattern that's been around at least since 1960s college kids were tracking down forgotten blues heroes.
"When I was stationed in Germany in the '90s," says Varnado, "I subscribed to a magazine called Blues Access. And in that magazine, there was always an article about an Oxford, Mississippi-based record company that was seeking out older, undiscovered or being-rediscovered blues artists in Mississippi, similar to Leo."
That would be Fat Possum. The indie label long since seemed to have exhausted the region's supply of wizened black bluesmen — until last year, when Varnado presented co-founder Bruce Watson with video evidence of what Welch does.
"That was a performance at my older brother's and my birthday party," says Varnado. "But it took me about two years to convince [Leo] to perform in my presence. That was the first time I'd ever heard him."
Fortunately for Welch, who knew Varnado's parents and grandparents, Varnado recognized not only his seasoned gifts, but the appeal of their source having been hidden from outside eyes and ears for so long.
"You'll notice I titled the video first by noting his age, as an 81-year-old Mississippi traditional blues artist," says Varnado, "To me, his age is a standout [fact], because usually at this point in one's life, their voice has diminished to a whisper, their energy level is fairly low." Welch — who sounds plenty energetic, by the way — chimes in with an emphatic, "Mmmhmm."
Indeed, almost every Welch-related headline written so far — this one included — has played up the advanced age at which he began his first-ever album release cycle.
"A lot of 'em ask me why did I wait until I was 81 years-old," says Welch. "I told 'em, 'Sometimes it's better to wait than to be too fast and go ahead on.' I had an audition to go interview with B.B. King, but I think that was too early in life. I tell people now if I'd have went on then, no telling where in the world I might be. But the Lord knows best. And I think now is just my time."
Lest you get the idea that Welch simply waited on fame to come and whisk him away from his down-home house party and picnic gigs, rest assured that idleness had no place in his reality; he spent decades cutting timber. Welch, his wife and their four children were subsisting on his 12-dollar-a-week unemployment check when he got the King audition.
"That's when I was unable to go somewhere with B.B. King and then have to pay my own way," Welch explains. "My wife and kids be at home starving to death. So I decided to stay here and starve with 'em. But we didn't starve. We still livin'. God keep on keepin' us."
The songs on Welch's debut, Sabougla Voices — some of which are original, others handed down — echo Welch's lived testimony. It's a grounded gospel album, the kind that confesses faith in an engaged and caring God and empowers listeners to keep on keepin' — as opposed to, say, passively awaiting streets of gold. Since 1975, Welch has mostly been singing and playing in church settings and on the area television show Black Gospel Express. (The Sabougla Voices was the name he gave the sister and sister-in-law who sang with him, call-and-response style, when they accompanied their Baptist preacher to visit nearby flocks.) But he's not at all opposed to singing and playing blues — often in ragged-but-right, punchy, boogieing, hill country fashion — when the occasion calls for it.
"The blues ain't nothing but something about life," Welch says. "Whether you work hard on a farm, or you work hard in the woods, or you have a girlfriend and you get on bad terms, all that is something about life. It ain't no difference in blues and gospel. Gospel is the good message of Jesus Christ."
Sure, Welch could heighten his mystique for his new audience with talk of being tragically torn between the devil's music and God's, but he arrived in front of his new audience with his worldview, identity and musical style already robustly fleshed out. He just needed help translating his convictions and confidence into compensation. "I don't have to do nothin' but ride," he says, "and fingers do the walkin', strings do the talkin'."
Email Music@nashvillescene.com.
