I've spent many years chasing interviews with bluesmen and women in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Dallas and Houston, Chicago, Kansas City, and elsewhere. I've flown into a city, and then driven all over the countryside, to hear them play, and to talk with them.   And, I've come to anticipate a disappointing answer to the question, 'Is there anyone playing around here that I haven't heard and who has real talent'?

A few years ago, while in Clarksdale, Mississippi, I asked Roger Stolle and Jeff Konkel that tough question.   Roger now lives in Mississippi and runs Cat Head - both an eclectic store and a tiny record company.   Jeff lives in St. Louis, but records Mississippi artists for his aptly named Broke and Hungry Record label.   At the time, they were planning their film on the local music scene, M is for Mississippi, and had carefully scoured the landscape.   The first name that came up in our conversation was Mr. L.C.   Best of all, I didn't have to go find Mr. L.C.   He was driving to Clarksdale, from his home near Ellisville, Mississippi, to play in front of Roger's downtown, red brick front store, on the last day of the Sunflower Blues and Gospel Fest.  

Mr. L.C. turned out to be L.C. Ulmer, the kind of character that might appear in a fictional, made for a television story.   Now, just about eighty years old, L.C. is a wiry, friendly, self-confident man, who has literally played thousands of gigs in juke houses, at Blue Monday parties, for picnics, on the street, and wherever people have gathered.   Despite writing original songs and mastering guitar, piano, harmonica, mandolin, bass, banjo, fiddle, drums, and kazoo, at the time, L.C. had not yet recorded any records or CDs.  

Despite his age, he seemed to have limitless energy.   L.C. played a cheap guitar to its limits - offering a fresh, slightly fuzzed-out boogie beat with his wildly bent thumb picking out the bass line.   His sound is rooted in tradition, but is thoroughly modern - with elements of blues, country, gospel, and early rock and roll all comfortably tucked into the songs.

He buck-danced, howled, and sang with abandon. A crowd soon appeared from the streets of Clarksdale.   Nobody sat still.   Dollar bills were dropped into his bucket. A year later, he got similar results at the Chicago Blues Festival where I watched people come off the sidewalk, to the Mississippi Stage, where he was going at it with his guitar and a small band.

It took nearly all of his eighty years, and, dedicated, Hill Country Records, for L.C. to finally end up on a CD.   And, that recording, aptly titled Long Ways From Home , is a 2007 live recording of a gig in Parma, Italy, at the Roots N' Blues Festival.   Thankfully, the recording perfectly captures L.C.'s energy and skill.

In another hopeful move to get L.C. some notice, he shows up on the Roger and Jeff's 200 8 DVD.   This tour through today's music scene in the blues state has received rave reviews from critics and Roger says that L.C. is one of the artists people call him about.

After the performance at Cat Head, in 2006, L.C. and I sat down to talk in the back of Roger's crowded store. We moved dozens of shipping boxes, papers, and records, so we could squeeze into the far too overcrowded space.  

You might think that L.C. would be cynical after so many years of hard work at day jobs, and, playing to small audiences, while many other artists made a big name - and maybe, the big money they say they made.   Instead, he turned out to be a joyful, thoughtful man, full of love for music. Mr. L.C. began to answer questions directly, with the same intense manner he plays his guitar.   L.C. started out with, "You asked me to relate it out, I'm going to relate it out to you."

And, he began to tell his story of his love for music - especially the guitar, the influence of his parents, and his many travels.   His memories of his early years, especially the family fish fries, are clear and fascinating.   Following up, we talked again briefly in Chicago, and on the phone in late 2008.  

Mr. L.C. is finally being heard by a growing audience, and he's having a great time.   He's made it to some of the larger festivals in the States, and to Italy, and Switzerland.   He's happy to play just about any gig. The last time we spoke, he was planning to play at a nursing home in Meridian, Mississippi, where he hasn't played for decades.  

L.C. is clear that he wants to keep playing, and traveling.   He says that his momma told him, "Son, if you don't ever stop, you won't ever grow no moss."

"My name is Lee Chester Ulmer.   I live in Ellisville, Mississippi near Laurel, Mississippi.   That's south of Clarksdale. I was born August the 28 th, 1928."

"I grew up down below Bay Springs, Mississippi.   A place called Stringer, Mississippi, right on highway 15. - fourteen kids - seven boys and seven girls.   I was the baby.   Me and my baby sister.   She lives in Kansas City, Kansas, now."

"The biggest portion of my life was guitar, and everywhere I went to work I told the folks, I said, 'I'm goin' to work, but when somebody calls me to play that guitar, you can forget me. And, if you don't want me when I come back, I ain't worried about no job'. That's my words."

"The guitar was my pride and job.   I wanted to go in front of that audience - always wanting to be seen.   I love that feeling.   That's me."

"I grew up on a farm - pickin' cotton, breakin' corn, takin' care of the stock. We had mules - chickens, hogs, stuff like that.   We were sharecroppers.   It was a man had around about 3 or 400 acres of land and he had a lot of sharecroppers on that.   Everybody had their own fields to keep up.   You had your own barn to keep your own mules. You had your own stalls to keep 'em where you stayed.   You had your own wagon."

"Cotton - that's what you were sellin' in those days.   Your corn - you kept that for food and to feed your stock on.   And, you raised your own vegetables - sugar cane and all that.   You raised your own meat.   We had sorghum. We raised turkeys, guineas - raised all that."

"We got up early in the mornin', every mornin'.   At 4:30, my daddy was on the floor and you better hit the floor at 5:00 - you kids.   And, my momma would almost have breakfast done.   And, we got out of that house at 6:00, and at 6:30 we was all goin' to the field before it got too hot."  

"It wasn't but about four or five months, we were in school.   And, sometimes you couldn't stay four or five months.   That didn't work out too good - we didn't get that full time in school. You had to come out to help with the crop.   I was needed.   I got up to the eight grade and that's where I cut off at."  

"My daddy learned us all how to work and make our own living - out in the woods, cuttin' logs, workin' on the railroad.   I did all that work.   I learned how to cut firewood to make a livin'   - used to love to cut firewood.   We cut fire wood all the summer for different people, stack it at the house, split it up and cord it up.   We worked.   They learned us how to work.   They said, 'If you don't work in my house, you can't eat'."  

"My daddy was a guitar player.   Heard him all the time.   My uncle was a guitar player.   My first cousin was a guitar player, on my daddy's side.   On my mama's side, they was all kinds of players.   They was banjo players, fiddle players, harmonica blowers.   Any music you want was in our family.   Had them Saturday night fish fries, them Friday night fish fries - all night long.   They cooked in them days - fried the fish in the wash pot, outside.   That's the way it was - all night long."

"(People) come and bought.   If you run it two days or three days - mostly run it three days and nights.   They start on Friday at 12:00 and then they run it to Sunday night round about 11:00 'cause everybody was farmin'.   And, then they'd go to the field, and they'd get up at one little house and sing different songs. Some folks were playin' the blues, and some folks were bringin' the guitars over."  

L.C.'s musical influences weren't limited to his family.   He remembers local Meridian, Mississippi native, Jimmie Rodger's playing at the family fish fry.   At an early age, he also heard music on 78-RPM records. In particular, he remembers listening to records by Peetie Wheatstraw, Tampa Red, and Blind Lemon Jefferson.  

"I started to playin' on a (guitar) when I was nine-and-a-half years old.   My daddy bought me my own guitar - Gene Autrey.   It was sunburst."  

"My daddy was a funny man.   He wasn't goin' to let you play his, 'cause he didn't want it tore up.   My brothers were the same way - they had guitars.   You weren't goin' to play theirs', either."  

"In those days, they didn't play in C, like we do now.   They played in a natural - straight natural.   I can play in it.   I can play anything.   A lot of folks can't.   They can't get there, but I can. And, I can play like most anybody I want to play like.   I can mark 'em (copy them)."

"They wasn't makin' solid wood (guitars) back in them days.   They was buildin' 'em.   Those guitars were all acoustic.   Those were the best guitars.   From yesteryear to this day, those were the best guitars. You could hear a guitar one mile at night, on a clear night.   You didn't have no amplifier."  

"My daddy'd be sittin' there.   He coached me on (playing) and next time you see me, I could do it.   See now, that's the way I trained myself to be in music and then I played music behind (other musicians).   I listen to you real good and I pick that up.   I want to go do what you done.   Next time you see me, you say, 'Son, did you learn that'?   I say, 'Yes sir, I learned it'.   I may not hit it then but when you see me again, I'll know it."

L.C. was singing at a young age, as well as playing the guitar.   His family attended a nearby Baptist church where the congregation sang, and he joined in.   L.C. says, his mother also sang at church and around the house day and night.

"I knew I could sing 'cause everybody in my family could sing.   Not only in my family - in my daddy's sister's family.   She had twenty-two kids - all them could sing.   In his other sister's family, all of them could sing. All my people were singers.   They could sing it all.   You name it."

L.C. fell under the spell of the gospel and blues recording artist Blind Roosevelt Graves, who he would sometimes hear when he visited a sister in Meridian.   L.C. says he fell in love with Grave's slide playing, and carefully watched what Graves did so he could get good at it.   Before L.C. was in his teens, he was mastering the guitar and playing for tips.

"And, one day in 1939, I never will forget this, a man comin' out of a house, he heard me play.   He told my momma and daddy, 'See that boy there, he's gonna be a great guitar player'."  

"I never will forget that.   And, the people we were livin' on their place, they can tell you what the man said, 'cause they're livin' too, today."

"Back then, you had to honor all them old people - whatever they said about you.   It was good and you know when you honor folk, you go farther in this world.   We were brought up not to sass the older people - respect, respect anyone.   My daddy said, 'Boy, you never get too old to learn.   Remember that, as long as you're growin' up, you never get too old to learn'."

"My daddy was Indian, his momma was Indian. He wouldn't laugh.   He'd just tell us that. He'd just tell us that.   He said, 'I'm gonna be the oldest man.   As long as I live, I'm gonna be the boss of this house.   When you get married you ain't comin' back in this house.   If you wanna go out the door, you ain't comin' back'.   He said, 'That's the way my daddy done me'. He said, 'I'm gonna do all of mine that away'."

"Sure enough, all fourteen of us got married and never went back home.   He'd say, 'Boy, that's your wife, not mine'.   He said, 'You know how to be a man?   You have to know how to take care of someone, boy'."  

"He learnt me how to buy groceries when I was nine-and-a-half years old.   I would help him pull the crosscut saw, when I was out of school.   I'd go down to the grocery store in the town.   He'd tell them, 'Let him have a sack of flour.   I'll see to him payin' you next week'.   He'd say, 'I'm learnin' you on money and how to make credit'.   Next week come, I'll go pay that man, get another sack of flour."  

"I always had credit and I still got that today. They say, without credit, nobody knows you.   I know they told the truth on that.   If you don't take responsibility, you not a man."  

"I been taught that by people I worked on the railroad with. That railroad - that's the place I should've stayed.   Southern Railroad.   I don't know what that railroad is now.   I worked on it and I worked on Lake Pontchartrain, down in New Orleans.   We were layin' steel.   That was in the 40s."

"I was under eighteen.   'Cause of the war, they didn't have no men. They took boys on the railroad and learnt them to do railroad work. I stayed.   They hired about forty boys one mornin'.   We know how to stand the heat.   We were trained for that.   That's why I say, 'If you are trained for it you can do it'."

"We were an extra gang not a section crew.   A section crew stayed.   We laid steel down into the oil wells.   We did work with Gulf Oil."

"The railroad is a funny company. They move you everywhere.   That's how I got all around. I went around this place and that place.   We stayed in the camp on the railroad and I played guitar. I didn't stay but a few years."

L.C. says that these early days working with the railroad gave him a chance to travel and he enjoyed it.   In the late 1940s, he moved to Kansas City to live with a sister, for a time.   He began to move around the country, occasionally living back in Mississippi.   Most of his jobs were in construction.   But, he played music wherever he lived.

"Got me a car so I could travel.   I went to work for E.L. Bruce Lumber Company in Laurel, Mississippi.   It was a big company.   I played (guitar) all the time.   I ate dinner real fast and get on that guitar.   If I had an hour for dinner, I eat fifteen minutes and play the guitar for forty-five.   If you seen me, (and) I didn't have that guitar - wouldn't be but a few minutes before I had it."  

L.C. worked as a one-man band around Laurel and Meridian for about four years.   He had learned how to play harmonica and would either wear a rack or attach it to his guitar.   He got tired of the bad pay at his day job and decided to travel, again.  

"I worked at E.L. Bruce for a while.   I said, 'This ain't gonna do.   Jackrabbit got my boots.   Got to move'. I got out of there making $6 a day."

L.C. made his way to Florida, and then headed to Arizona.   While in Arizona, he worked at a combined truck stop, museum, and nightclub, where he says he had a chance to meet and play with many popular artists, of the time.

"I saw Elvis Presley.   Played with him - Les Paul, Mary Ford, Fats Domino, Brook Benton, Sam Cooke, Jimmy Reed.   I wish I could recall all of them."

Within a few years, he was off to California, where he worked as a street musician.   L.C. then moved back home, to Mississippi, in the early 1960s.   He soon began working construction at a missile base .   And, for a time, he had a band called the Bel Air Clowns.

"I used to play every Friday night for the government.   See, that was a government job.   The government didn't allow no laws on (the base) for thirty miles - you gamble, drink on the weekends.   Folks won't even go home.   So, I stay there and play."  

"I got tired of that and said, 'Well, I'm going north'.   I left out of there in 1965, and went north - stayed there thirty-seven years."

"I had one brother in Illinois - he had one job there - worked fifty-two years.   And, I had a sister there, and I'd say I had about four hundred cousins."

"I drove in a 1952 Cadillac Fleetwood - white.   It was fast too.   That '52 was heavy.   I was makin' money up there with that guitar.   And, I was workin' construction."

"See (Joliet) Illinois, every night there's a place to go. Today, it's about 45 or 50 miles from Chicago - It used to be 65 or 70 miles.   But, the way they got the roads laid now, you can hit it."

"I get through playin', I'd go set up in another juke.   I became the host there over every juke. Other guys were playin' there but they couldn't play like me.   I was a one-man band.   I'm talkin' about big jukes.   I ain't talkin' about any little ones. I bought a Lincoln - suicide doors - 1965, Lincoln Continental."

"I was playin' every night.   I had all them jukes there - Black Diamond, Club 99, Hillcrest, Joe Howard's.   Them jukes have somethin' every night.   There were jukes everywhere - Blue Monday parties.   Tuesday night it was a dance.   Wednesday night it was a dance."  

"Muddy Waters and all of them would come.   Howlin' Wolf. I'd be there. They come to the big jukes and play and I'd be there.   I was the host there, man.   I got a chance to be with all them guys. Elmore James - (sings) 'I want to pack my bags and go'.   I used to play with him.   Played with him right in Jackson (Mississippi).   I can play all them blues.   But, I just don't mark nobody (copy)."

"Howlin' Wolf was a big old man - shhh.   I seen him a whole lot.   When Howlin' Wolf would show up - 'Hey, Ulmer, you gonna play with me tonight'?   I said, 'I'm gonna let you do the howlin' tonight'.   He'd say, 'I wanna show you how to howl'.   I says, 'Howlin' Wolf, I'm no match for you.   I'm a plainspoken man. You cuttin' records.   I'm not. You're makin' your money.   It's comin' every which way'."  

"Muddy Waters, he said, 'You ain't the kind of man that wants to run out there and try to beat other folks out'.   I said, 'I can't do that.   I'm a man that wants to sit and learn and listen from somebody'.   I said, 'They can tell me. I'll listen'.   You can't be no other way."

L.C. says he visited Chicago's bustling, musically rich, Maxwell Street, but he found the area tough, and didn't want to play there.   In addition to Muddy, Wolf, and James, he quickly lists playing with or seeing, at around this time, Hound Dog Taylor, Jimmy Reed, and Buddy Guy.

"I was workin night and day and I used to stop on the job to play. We were cuttin' out concrete, build big plants.   I helped build Pure Oil; I helped build them big chemical factories in Illinois. All the ironworkers and pipe fitters from Texas, they'd say, 'Hey Ulmer, go get your guitar'.   They goin' to put money in it.   'Hey Ulmer, what you gonna play'?   I'd say, 'You don't need to worry about that.   I'm just gonna play while you eat dinner.   I'll serenade you'."

"(To be popular) you got to stir 'em up. My daddy was a dancer.   All my people were dancers.   I do my own dancin' - the Big Apple, the Suzie Q, and Breakin' the Chicken Neck, and all that sort of stuff."  

"After I did my last days of work at 65, I got ready to come home.   I moved back to Mississippi, in about 2001.   I didn't go up there (Joliet) to stay.   I said, 'I ain't stayin' in Illinois'.   It snowed every year.   Before I came back here (Mississippi), I bought a home."  

"I never drink, never smoke, never dip, never chew, never gamble. That ain't for your body.   God made your body, for one thing.   It's a machine.   If you don't keep it right, that machine gonna give away."

Today, L.C. teaches music - mostly guitar, piano, drums, and bass.   Chase Holifield, fifteen at the initial interview in 2006, accompanied L.C. on guitar.   L.C. proudly explained that Chase, a young white neighbor, really knows how to play the blues. L.C. has strong feelings about the best way to teach, and get the sound he wants.

"I know every note on the guitar. I don't have to have no book.   I can play most any style I want to play.   I play bluegrass, jazz.   I can play sentimental.   People playin' guitar (by ear) them's the best. They come from ground zero.   They didn't know no books. They didn't go to school some of 'em. Some of 'em had to make an X for their name but they could play that guitar.   But, they didn't know what key it was in.   But, they knew it made a sound and they can make it do anything they want it to do."

As we ended a recent phone call, Mr. L.C. told me he was hoping to cut a new record.   Hill Country Records chief, Justin Showah says he hopes to have it out in early 2009.  

Still full of energy surprises, L.C. says that, once the next CD is out, he wants to record solo with a piano. Wrapping up, he told me to call him any time - day or night.   He'd be up.