Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 201; Larry Nager interview with Wallace Coleman, part 5 of 10

Q:

LARRY: You know, in many—the blues will live on... blues continues to evolve and change, but in many ways Wallace Coleman is an irreplaceable part of blues history. There is not another Wallace Coleman anywhere. He is the result of a very unique uh, group of... of happenstances and circumstances that will not be repeated. To grow up in a rural community in east Tennessee, very isolated uh, where the radio is bringing in the music and the community music makers are the—the music you hear. That’s not gonna happen today with every kid tied into, you know, computers. Uh, in that same sense, going into the kind of blues scene he went into, you know, there’s a rustbelt blues scene and we call it Chicago blues and we talk about Chess Records being in Chicago. But there were blues record labels in Cleveland. There were blues record labels in Detroit, Cincinnati had King Records, so you know, in a sense, they were the same community as in Chicago elsewhere, the same forces. (PAUSED)