FOLKFabulous Festival: SC's Freddie Vanderford among slate of musicians on tap

Life in Buffalo, a former mill town about five miles outside of Union, could hardly be better, according blues musician Freddie Vanderford. As evidence, he noted the contents of the supper he finished just before being interviewed for this article.

“I’ve been eating fresh fried okra, fresh tomatoes – right out of the garden. That’s what I’m talking about.”

Vanderford has a sincere appreciation for the down-home and authentic. When he was a teenager, Vanderford was listening to the local AM radio station and heard a blues singer who sounded unlike anything he’d heard before. It was the late 1960s – a good time for music, of course, from psychedelic rock to electric blues to pop.

But this blues tune on the radio didn’t sound like the White Album or Jimi Hendrix or even B.B. King. It was raw and stripped-down and little countrified.

Down home. Authentic.

When the deejay said the song was by a local bluesman named Peg Leg Sam, Vanderford was even more intrigued. He decided he had to meet the man.

He learned that Peg Leg lived in the northern part of Union County, way out in the country.

“I drove out to find him. It was dark out there – no streetlights or anything … He was a little standoffish at first,” Vanderford recalled.

“He wouldn’t play for me” – harmonica was Peg Leg’s instrument – “but asked me to play. I could play some, but not at the level I wanted to. Anyway, he invited me back, and we became friends.”

Peg Leg taught Vanderford his style of Piedmont Blues. Acoustic-based, percussive and rural-sounding, Piedmont blues was an inspiration to the likes of Johnny Cash and the British rock band Pink Floyd, named in part for Spartanburg bluesman Pink Anderson.

Peg Leg, Anderson and other Piedmont Blues artists did a lot of their performing at medicine shows, warming crowds up with their humorous songs and storytelling.

Vanderford hung out with Peg Leg a good deal of the time over the next few years, going to shows, driving him to buy beer, and sitting around at Peg’s house, watching wrestling on TV and playing tunes.

“He played harp, would sing a little bit, tell a few jokes, sell some snake oil,” Vanderford explained. “He was a one-man entertainer. I strive for that, but I’m more comfortable if there’s a guitar player beside me.”

For the past several decades, Vanderford has fronted an electric blues band, the Shades, and put on acoustic shows, more in the Piedmont Blues style, with a rotating cast of impressive sidemen.

He has been a mainstay on the club circuit in South Carolina and, in recent years, has gained recognition for his part in keeping the Piedmont Blues tradition alive.

In 2010, he received the Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Award. At a presentation ceremony, he and his longtime collaborator, guitarist Brandon Turner, played the old Peg Leg Sam tune “Greasy Greens” in the state General Assembly chambers.

At this Saturday’s FOLKFabulous festival on the USC Horseshoe, Vanderford will perform as part of Mill Billy Blues, a collection of some of the Upstate’s top-flight blues musicians. Joining Vanderford will be bassist Franklin Wilkie, formerly of the Marshall Tucker Band, acclaimed guitarist Ricky Godfrey, and Turner.

Vanderford performed at FOLKFabulous two years ago. Though he wasn’t on the bill in 2014, he came anyway.

Put on by USC’s McKissick Museum, with funding from the South Carolina Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, FOLKFabulous features diverse folk music as well as instrument-makers and other artisans in educational, interactive exhibits. This year’s event will also include a Food Truck Rodeo.

It’s Vanderford’s kind of thing. “Oh man, I love it,” he said. “They do it up right.”

By Baker Maultsby, Special to Go Columbia

This story was originally published August 19, 2015 at 2:28 PM.