Drink Small (born January 28, 1933)[1] is an American soul blues and electric blues guitarist, pianist, singer, and songwriter. He is known as The Blues Doctor and has been influenced by a variety of musical styles including gospel and country music.
Early life
Drink Small (his real name)[2][3] was born in Bishopville, South Carolina[1] into a family of singers and musicians,[4] who were also sharecroppers working in cotton fields.[5] His mother was Alice "Missie" Small and his father was Arthur Jackson; they never married.[6] There is no story or significance behind his name.[3] He attended a two-room schoolhouse as a child. He taught himself to play the guitar around the age of six or seven,[7] originally learning on his uncle's one-string guitar.[8] He made a guitar as a child, cutting up an old inner tube for strings.[6] Also at an early age, he learned to play an old pump organ that was in his home.[3]
At the age of eight, he was thrown from and caught under the moving wheel of a mule-drawn wagon and suffered a severe back injury. He wore a makeshift body cast for weeks, which ended his days picking cotton[5] and helped turn him towards his musical path by listening to the radio and learning to play the songs on the guitar.[9] Later in his youth he organized a local gospel group, the Six Stars. During high school he sang in the school glee club and with a quartet, as well as in his church. Around this time he also began to perform with a professional gospel group, the Golden Five.[8]
Career
After high school, he attended the Denmark Area Trade School in South Carolina, studying barbering.[3][10] On weekends when he returned home from school, he and the Golden Five would perform at house parties.[8] He found playing music at night and cutting hair all day to be difficult, so he quit barbering and began to play music full time.[6] In 1955, he moved to Columbia, South Carolina[5] to play guitar with gospel group The Spiritualaires. That group's performances included a show at the Apollo Theater in Harlem[4] and an appearance on the Shirley Caesar Caravan television show.[3] The group toured with singer Sam Cooke as well as The Staple Singers and The Harmonizing Four. Sister Rosetta Tharpe once invited Small to be her permanent guitar player.[6]
His first recording was a single with The Spiritualaires in 1956, on Vee-Jay Records.[11]
He was considered one of the best guitarists in gospel music in the 1950s, before he turned his attention to secular music later in that decade. His transition to playing the blues full-time was aided by his fan base from the gospel music world.[8] In 1959, he recorded the single "I Love You Alberta", released by Sharp Records.[1][12]
With a mastery of multiple styles of music, a basso profondo blues voice, and a charismatic stage presence that includes telling bawdy stories and jokes onstage, in the 1960s he began to gain a following with college students in the Carolinas.[3][14] He performed his blues at almost every institution of higher learning in South Carolina, along with frequent appearances at nightclubs, roadhouses,[3] and blues clubs throughout the state.[6]
Over the course of his long career, Small wrote hundreds of songs[7] and recorded occasionally for small record labels, issuing six albums between 1990 and 2008.[13] He started his own record label, Bishopville Records, in the 1970s.[14] He recorded dirty blues tracks, such as "Tittie Man" and "Baby, Leave Your Panties Home",[15] and more righteous songs, such as "The Lord Been Good to Me".[16]
In February 2010, Small was one of several South Carolina musicians featured in the episode "Juke Joints and Honky Tonks" of the television documentary series Carolina Stories.[17]
As of 2015, he was featured weekly on Blues Moon Radio, broadcast on WUSC-FM from Columbia, South Carolina.[8]
He moved to Columbia, South Carolina in 1955, bringing his mother with him.[5] Although he toured across the U.S. and in Europe, Small has a fear of flying and preferred to perform close to home, where he cared for his mother. She died in 1988.[19]
He never made enough money solely from his music career, so he required outside income. He sometimes sold fishing worms out of his backyard between musical gigs.[19] He was quoted as saying "Rich people got the blues because they are trying to keep the money, poor people got the blues because they are trying to get some money, and Drink Small got the blues because I ain't got no money."[6]
His well-known brief, pithy rhymes and life aphorisms have been called "Drinkisms".[5][6]
2015: Mayor Stephen K. Benjamin proclaimed July 30, 2015 as "Drink Small Day" in Columbia, South Carolina,[25] which has become an annual celebration[9]
2018: Small's likeness was featured on a mural in the Five Points neighborhood of Columbia, South Carolina[20][26]
2023: Drink Small Day celebrated February 4, 2023 at the South Carolina State Museum to commemorate Small's 90th birthday; the musician performed at the event[27]
^ abcdefClick, Carolyn (December 10, 2014). "There is no other Drink Small". The State. Columbia, South Carolina. p. 17. Retrieved February 13, 2021.
^ abcdefghDeLune, Clair (September 17, 2014). "Drink Small, the Blues Doctor". Columbia Living Magazine. Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Retrieved February 17, 2021.
Duffy, Timothy (2004). Music Makers: Portraits and Songs from the Roots of America. Hillsborough, North Carolina: Music Maker Press. ISBN9780974394701. LCCN2005-561613. OCLC62525457. – features Small
Wilson-Giarratano, Gail (2014). Drink Small: The Life and Music of South Carolina's Blues Doctor. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press. ISBN9781626197404. LCCN2014-953164. OCLC889643720. – Small's biography
