https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVprinb4cjI

We have been on a serious Van Halen streak. Okay mostly that’s because I haven’t been home, and it’s easier to put up Van Halen things than to find other things that interest me. My guitars are taking a back-seat to my life, still, but it’s not going to stay that way. As I watch my dog walk on a ledge next to my window and eat weird things, and yes, that’s an entirely different story, I came across this woman, a guitar player named Beverly Watkins.

The story is that she’s a grandmother, 76 years old and still playing. Sure that’s cool, but the sub-story is even better. She has been playing since age 8 when her aunt gave her a guitar. She never let her gender get in her way, and she actually gigs, still. In earlier years, in her Georgia home, she opened for James Brown, for Ray Charles for Aretha Franklin. She tells the male followers, musicians, guitar players who doubt her ability, to come to the show and “wait and see.” And play she can. And she’s wise. She’s wise about music. She’s wise about guitar playing. She says (and this is the sub-story I am referring to): “in music … to stay on top, you gotta have something very unusual, something that somebody hasn’t seen.” Recently that’s what I said I want to hear about in interviews, in books, that unusual intangible that makes a star, that makes a legend. It’s the greatest truth. A musician of note must create; they must be unusual.

As for her, is she unusual outside of her tenacity, outside of her gender, outside of her age? Probably not. But I have to say she’s pretty cool. Cool enough that her first record deal came at the age of 59, a record deal after decades and decades of playing music, of simply doing what she loved. And that should serve as a lesson to all of us. Even if it’s not some unusual creation that makes one a legend, don’t stop. Do.

Original story courtesy of CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/24/living/beverly-watkins-granny-guitar-feat/index.html