“Abner Jay, the first of the original black musicians. The only electric six string banjo you’ll ever hear.  Abner says the original thirteen are dead, and he is half dead. For forty two years Abner has been playing banjo, drums, harmonica, and singing all at the same time.”  I don’t know when that was written, but he died sometime in the ’90s. I don’t really know a whole lot about him, except that if you click the link you can listen to a whole LP’s worth of his rad music at the WFMU site. I prefer side one–mostly because of the opener, “The Backbone of America is a Mule and Cotton,” which explains in great detail the advantages of owning a mule rather than a horse, and also because of “Oh Susanna”–but you should really listen to the whole thing.

And PS if you were wondering- This totes counts as literary because I got the link from Ariana Reines whose new poetry collection, Coeur de Lion got some love this morning from Ben Mirov at Coldfront.