Mance Lipscomb

Texas Blues Legend

Mance Lipscomb spent half a century singing and playing for black audiences in his hometown of Navasota, Texas before being discovered and recorded by white musicologists in 1960 at age 65. Although he is widely considered a bluesman, Lipscomb preferred to call himself a “songster”; his repertoire of some 350 songs included ballads, rags, waltzes, polkas, and hymns. His music helped him endure the poverty and adversity that were a given for Southern blacks of his era. He was almost as admired for his front-porch philosophizing (“Once you do Right, Right’ll come back to ya”), much of which is preserved in his oral autobiography, I Say Me for a Parable, published by collaborator Glen Alyn in 1993. Born : April 09, 1895 in Navasota, Texas. Died : January 30, 1976 in Navasota, Texas.