Willie Hatcher

about

#1 Willie or Will Hatcher was a blues mandolin player and singer. #2 Willie Hatcher was a Northern Soul musician. #1 Willie Hatcher was born on October 28, 1909 near Clarksdale, Mississippi. He spent his earliest years there, but his family moved to Arkansas in 1916 when his father was able to purchase some land. Later they moved again; this time to Wilson, Arkansas where Willie lived until 1925, at which time he moved to St. Louis and began working as a labourer. He married young, in 1927, at a time when he was working for a plant owned by the Fisher Body Co., making automobile bodies for Chevrolets. In the early days of his marriage he was living next door to a mandolinist, and it was from this man (Hatcher does not remember his name) that Willie absorbed the fundamentals of mandolin playing. Absorbed is the correct term, for as Willie tells it he received not a particle of instruction from this man, but rather merely observed him as he played his mandolin and noted the position of his fingers for the chords. He went down to a pawnshop at 18th and Franklin one day and bought a mandolin. He proceeded to teach himself the instrument. "I didn't even know how to tune it when I got it", he said. "But I watched where he put his fingers to make chords and I did the same thing and just turned on the strings until I got it sounding right to me". "Let me tell you now", he stated, "l never had any instruction on the mandolin. I just learned it myself. You could put some music in fro

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