William Henry "Bill" Barth (born December 13, 1942 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

; died July 14, 2000 in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

, the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 blues guitarist who, along with John Fahey

John Fahey (musician)

John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...

 and Henry Vestine

Henry Vestine

Henry Charles Vestine a.k.a. "The Sunflower", was an American guitar player known mainly as a member of the band Canned Heat. He was with the group from its start in 1966 to July 1969...

, located 1930s blues great Skip James

Skip James

Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....

 in a hospital in Tunica, Mississippi

Tunica, Mississippi

Tunica is a town in Tunica County, Mississippi, United States, located near the Mississippi River. Until the early 1990s the town was one of the most impoverished places in the United States, semi-famous for the particularly deprived neighbourhood known as "Sugar Ditch Alley", named for the open...

 in 1964.

Memphis Country Blues Society

Barth co-founded the Memphis Country Blues Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the Delta blues. With the Country Blues Society, Bill produced five festivals between 1966 and 1970 featuring artists such as Furry Lewis

Furry Lewis

Furry Lewis was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. Lewis was one of the first of the old-time blues musicians of the 1920s to be brought out of retirement, and given a new lease of recording life, by the folk blues revival of the 1960s.-Life and...

, Gus Cannon

Gus Cannon

Gus Cannon was an American blues musician, who helped to popularize jug bands in the 1920s and 1930s. There is doubt about his birth year; his tombstone gives the date as 1874....

, Bukka White

Bukka White

Booker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...

, Sleepy John Estes

Sleepy John Estes

John Adam Estes , best known as Sleepy John Estes or Sleepy John, was a American blues guitarist, songwriter and vocalist, born in Ripley, Lauderdale County, Tennessee.-Career:...

, Yank Rachell

Yank Rachell

James "Yank" Rachell was an American country blues musician, dubbed an "elder statesman of the blues."-Career:...

 and Fred McDowell

Fred McDowell

Fred McDowell known by his stage name; Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American Hill country blues singer and guitar player.-Career:...

.

Discography

• 1969 Memphis Swamp Jam (originally on Blue Thumb Records
  Blue Thumb Records
  Blue Thumb Records was an American record label founded in 1968 by Bob Krasnow, along with former A&M Records executives Tommy LiPuma and Don Graham. Krasnow had been in the record business for a number of years, working as a promotion man for King Records and also working for Buddah/Kama Sutra...
  
  , later reissued on the Arhoolie
  Arhoolie Records
  Arhoolie Records is a small record label run by Chris Strachwitz. The label was founded by Strachwitz in 1960 as a way for him to record and publish previously obscure "down home blues" artists such as Lightnin' Hopkins, Snooks Eaglin and Bill Gaither...
  
   label: Three guitar duets by John Fahey
  John Fahey (musician)
  John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
  
  , and Bill Barth, using the pseudonyms of R L Watson and Josiah Jones)
• 1971-74 'On The Road Again' Country Blues 1969-1974 (FLYCD58 Interstate Music) Bill backs various old blues guys on tracks 13,14 and plays second guitar with Lum Guffin on track 16.
• John Fahey Vol. III: The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites
  The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites
  In the liner notes for the 1999 reissue, Lee Gardner comments "[It] represents the first, best recorded declaration from Fahey that he was interested in transforming his music into a vehicle for personal expression that built on his influences but accepted none of their prosaic boundaries. Nowadays...
  
  (TAKOMA C 1004) Duet with Fahey on track 3, "On the Banks of the Owchita". Barth recorded other tracks with Fahey which were not used.

External links

• "The Real True Story of How I Found Nathan Beauregard
  Nathan Beauregard
  Nathan Beauregard, real name Nathan Bogard, was an African American blues singer and guitarist....
  
  and Got Him to Play Music Again" by Bill Barth http://www.bluesworld.com/Beauregard4.html