⬇️ BUSTER PICKENS ⬇️
(Edwin Goodwin Pickens)
(4CD)
(4CD)
BIOGRAPHY
He was born Edwin Goodwin Pickens in Hempstead, Texas.
In the 1930s Pickens, along with Robert Shaw and others, was part of the
"Santa Fe Circuit", named after touring musicians utilising the Santa Fe
freight trains. From that time, Pickens described people doing the slow
drag to "slow low-down dirty blues" in barrelhouse joints.
Following service in the United States Army in World War II, Pickens
settled in Houston, Texas. He appeared on his first disc recording on
January 13, 1948, providing backing for Perry Cain on his single "All the
Way from Texas" backed with "Cry Cry", released by Gold Star Records.
Further recording work followed over the next eighteen months, as Pickens
played in different sessions as part of the accompaniment to Cain, Bill
Hayes, and Goree Carter.
Pickens later accompanied Alger "Texas" Alexander in the latter's final
recording session, for Freedom Records in 1950. Later Pickens regularly
performed with Lightnin' Hopkins and played on several of Hopkins's albums
in the early 1960s, including Walkin' This Road by Myself (1962),
Lightnin' and Co. (1962), and Smokes Like Lightning (1963). Pickens had by
this time also recorded his own debut solo album, Buster Pickens (1960),
and appeared in the 1962 film The Blues.
Pickens was shot dead by his cousin after an argument in a bar in
Houston, in November 1964.