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Listen: The Blues ProgramGospel guitarist Willie Eason playing his lap steel guitar in Florida.
Image Number
Rights
Collection
Series 1603, Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs Florida Folklife Archive Florida Folk Heritage Award winners' files, 1985-1995 ; Box 5, FF1
Geographic Term
Subject Term
Musical instruments
Bottleneck (Guitar playing)
Steel guitar
Plucked instruments
Guitar
African American entertainers
Folk musicians
African American country musicians
African American musicians
Instrumentalists
Stringed instrument players
Plucked instrument players
African American guitarists
Gospel musicians
Personal Subjects
Physical Description
Biographical Note
Born in the LaCrosse community of Schley County, Georgia in 1921 or 1922. His family moved to Philadelphia, PA before he was a year old. In Philadelphia Willie took up the steel guitar and played it in the House of God, Keith Dominion church his family attended. By 1940, he began to travel the eastern US from New York to Miami to play for revivals, church meetings, and later, on street corners. Between the 1940s and 1960s Eason often worked in Florida, but he and his family did not move permanently to St. Petersburg until 1986. Eason won the Florida Folk Heritage Award in 1995. He later passed away on June 16, 2005.
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