Bowling Green John Cephas
b. 4 September 1930, Washington, DC, USA. Cephas was raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and learned guitar from local musicians and from records. His music is indebted to Blind Boy Fuller and Eugene ‘Buddy’ Moss, and his dexterous, slightly anonymous playing shares with them a ragtime-influenced complexity. His singing voice is deep and rather unvaried, and his repertoire eclectic, drawing on both tradition and recordings (including, surprisingly, those of Skip James). Cephas has led a settled life as a civil service carpenter, with music a sideline; only in the '70s did his talent come to wider notice, when he began to play festivals and to record, at first with Wilbert ‘Big Chief’ Ellis and, since Ellis's death, with the young harmonica player Phil Wiggins.