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BIOGRAPHY
MANCE LIPSCOMB
Navasota Bluesman
1895 – 1976
Mance Lipscomb, guitarist and songster, was born to Charles and Jane Lipscomb on April 9, 1895, in the Brazos bottoms near Navasota, Texas. Mance lived most of his life as a tenant farmer.
Lipscomb represented one of the last remnants of the nineteenth-century songster tradition, which predated the development of the blues. Though songsters might incorporate blues into their repertoires, as did Lipscomb, they performed a wide variety of material in diverse styles – including ballads, rags, dance pieces; and popular, sacred and secular songs. Lipscomb himself insisted that he was a songster, not a guitarist or “blues singer”, since he played all kinds of music. His eclectic repertoire has been reported to have contained 350 pieces spanning two centuries.
Lipscomb was born into a musical family and began playing at an early age. His father was a fiddler, his uncle played the banjo and his brothers were guitarists. His mother bought him a guitar when he was eleven, and soon he was accompanying his father – and later entertaining alone at suppers and Saturday night dances. Although he had some contact with such early recording artists as fellow Texans Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie Johnson, and early country star James Charles (Jimmie) Rodgers; he did not make recordings until his discovery during the folk-song revival of the 1960’s. This discovery marked the beginning of over a decade of involvement in folk-song revival, during which Lipscomb won wide acclaim and emulation from audiences and performers for his virtuosity as a guitarist and the breadth of his repertoire. Admirers enjoyed his lengthy reminiscences and eloquent observations regarding music and life; many of which are contained in taped and written materials in the Mance Lipscomb – Glenn Myers Collection in the Barker Texas History Center.
Lipscomb made numerous recordings and appeared at such festivals as the Berkeley Folk Festival of 1961, where he played before a crowd of more than 40,000. In clubs Lipscomb often shared the bill with young revivalist or rock bands. He was also the subject of a documentary film by Les Blank of Flower Films – “Mance Lipscomb, A Well Spent Life”.
After 1974 declining health confined him to a nursing home and hospital. He died in Navasota on January 30, 1976 and is buried in Rest Haven Cemetery in Navasota.
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