UNCLE ART SATHERLEY

Yesterday, Feb 10th, was the 25th anniversary of the death of Art Satherley, an Englishman who became one of Blind Willie McTell's record producers. He died in Fountain Valley, California, at the grand age of 96. He was obviously important, and widely loved, in country music, but he was active in "race records" too. As I write in Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes:

"The producer of the 1933 McTell-Weaver-Moss recording sessions was the 43-year old Arthur Edward Satherley, who had grown up in Bristol, in the west of England, and arrived in the States in 1913 hoping to see a land full of cowboys and indians. Finding himself in Milwaukee with disappointingly few of either type in sight, he had drifted into the record business in 1918 and enjoyed a long and agreeable career within it. At the beginning of the 1930s, he was living in a very mixed, well-to-do immigrant neighborhood on West 140th Street in New York City, and commuting downtown to produce and vet talent for the newly-formed American Record Company, ARC. It was here that Willie McTell and friends recorded for this Englishman in September 1933."