Betsy Siggins

Club 47 Staff Member and Founding Member of NEFMA

Betsy Siggins 5: These guys would end up on our living room couches, and it’s ironic that that’s where they told their best stories and that’s where they felt comfortable, that’s where they got drunk, and they fell where they slept, or they slept where they fell. I can remember Reverend Gary Davis staying with us and he could not take off his overcoat. These were people who were used to waking up with nothing every day. It’s so haunting and it’s so sad, and yet out of all that sadness and poverty came these incredible, incredible songs. We’re lucky that we had academicians who wanted to record them, make something of them, honor them, and try to get a little money in their pockets. So there became a circuit for the blues musicians to come up the East Coast and play in lots of different cities.