Buddy Moss
| Eugene "Buddy" Moss | |
|---|---|
Moss in 1941
|
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Eugene Moss |
| Also known as | Buddy Moss |
| Born |
January 16, 1914 Jewell, Georgia, United States |
| Died | October 19, 1984 (aged 70) Atlanta, Georgia, United States |
| Genres | Blues |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, vocalist, songwriter |
| Instruments | Harmonica, guitar, vocals |
| Years active | 1930–1976 |
| Labels |
Columbia (1933, with Georgia Cotton Pickers) American Record (1933) Biograph (1967) Document (1992) Travelin' Man (1996) Classic Blues (2002) |
| Associated acts |
Georgia Cotton Pickers Robert "Barbecue Bob" Hicks Curley Weaver Georgia Browns Fred McMullen Blind Willie McTell Josh White |
Eugene "Buddy" Moss (January 16, 1914 – October 19, 1984) was an American blues musician.
In the estimation of many blues scholars, he was one of the two most influential East Coast blues guitarists to record in the period between Blind Blake's final sessions in 1932 and Blind Boy Fuller's debut in 1935 (the other being Josh White). A younger contemporary of Blind Willie McTell, Curley Weaver and Barbecue Bob, Moss was part of a coterie of Atlanta bluesmen. He was among the few of his era whose careers were reinvigorated by the blues revival of the 1960s and 1970s. A guitarist of uncommon skill and dexterity with a strong voice, he began as a musical disciple of Blake and may well have influenced on the later Piedmont-style guitarist Fuller. Moss's career was halted in 1935 by a six-year jail term and then by the Second World War, but he lived long enough to be rediscovered in the 1960s, when he revealed that his talent had been preserved through the years. He was reputed to have been cantankerous and mistrusting of others.
In later years, Moss credited his friend and bandmate Barbecue Bob with being a major influence on his playing. Scholars also contend that Blind Blake was a major force in his development, as both share certain mannerisms and inflections. It has also been suggested by Alan Balfour and others that Moss may have been an influence on Blind Boy Fuller, although they never met and Moss's recording career ended before Fuller's began – Moss's first recordings display some inflections and nuances that Fuller did not put down on record until some years later.
Moss was one of 12 children born to a sharecropper in Jewell, Georgia, in Warren County, midway between Atlanta and Augusta. There is some disagreement about the year of his birth, some sources indicating 1906 and many others of more recent vintage claiming 1914. He began teaching himself the harmonica at a very early age, and he played at local parties around Augusta, where the family moved when he was four and remained for the next 10 years. By 1928, he was busking around the streets of Atlanta. "Nobody was my influence," he told Robert Springer of his harmonica playing, in a 1975 interview. "I just kept hearing people, so I listen and I listen, and listen, and it finally come to me."
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