Mose Vinson born 7 August 1917

Mose Vinson (August 7, 1917 – November 16, 2002) was an American boogie-woogie, blues and jazz pianist and singer. His best known recordings were "Blues With A Feeling" and "Sweet Root Man". Over his lengthy career, Vinson worked with various musicians including Booker T. Laury and James Cotton. 

Vinson was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi. He taught himself how to play the piano as a child, initially playing in his local church. In his teenage years, Vinson started playing his own style of barrelhouse boogie-woogie in local juke joints in Mississippi and Tennessee, incorporating both blues and jazz in his repertoire. In 1932, following a chance meeting with Sunnyland Slim, Vinson relocated from Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee. 

In the 1930s and 1940s, Vinson continued to play at local juke house and rural community parties. By the early 1950s, Vinson found employment as a custodian at the Taylor Boarding Home, where artists often stayed whilst recording next door at Sun Records studios. In the studios, Sam Phillips occasionally requested that Vinson accompany musicians. These included James Cotton on "Cotton Crop Blues" (1954), and Jimmy DeBerry on the latter's "Take a Little Chance". Phillips also allowed Vinson to record some tracks of his own, although these were not released until the 1980s.Vinson recorded two versions of "Forty-Four", one retitled "Worry You Off My Mind", and the other as "My Love Has Gone" (also known as "Come See Me"). Session musicians on these recordings included Walter Horton, Joe Hill Louis and Joe Willie Wilkins. 

 

 

Here’s Mose Vinson with “Come see me (aka My love has gone)”

                                     from above album.

 

After a period of lesser musical activity, by the early 1980s, the Centre for Southern Folklore had enlisted Vinson to perform at various cultural events, and at local schools. He became a regular at the Centre, where he played and taught for twenty years. In 1990, his contribution towards the album, Memphis Piano Blues Today, was recorded at his home. 

In 1997, his first full-length CD compilation album was released via the Centre. Declining health, however, stopped him playing not long before his death. 

Mose Vinson died of diabetes, in November 2002 in Memphis, at the age of 85.

In 2007, the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival was dedicated to his memory. 

 

Historically, there has been some confusion over both the birth and death dates for Vinson. Allmusic quotes August 7, 1917 and November 30, 2002; whilst the Encyclopaedia of Popular Music cites August 7, 1917 and November 16, 2002; yet another on-line source specialising in death details quotes June 2, 1917 and November 23, 2002. The information contained in Blues: A Regional Experience by Eric S. Leblanc (author), Bob L. Eagle (contributor), published in 2013, is deemed to be the most reliable and definitive to date. (Info Wikipedia)

 

 

Mose often played with drummer L.T. Lewis in his later years. Here the two veteran bluesmen teamed up with Glen Cammack and Ron Easley who are among the many great musicians to come out of Memphis Messick High School in the '60s. Easley also collaborated with Alex Chilton on recordings and performances for many years.