- Margaret D.
- Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Drink Small, a local musical treasure, recently turned 90 years old. Let’s reflect on Mr. Small’s career and legacy.
Blues legend Drink Small has entertained countless people in the Midlands and beyond with his distinctive musical style and talent. Generations of Columbians have enjoyed listening to him play or danced along to his records.
Born on January 28, 1933 in Bishopville, SC, Drink Small was the son of Alice “Missie” Small and Arthur Jackson. His parents, who never married, were sharecroppers. Both parents loved music. His mother sang, and his father played an old pump organ, accordion, and mouth harp. As a child, Small attended school in a 2-room schoolhouse and picked cotton. At age 8 he was seriously injured in a wagon accident. Unable to pick cotton, Small rested in bed and listened to music on the radio. This turn of events allowed Small to avoid a life sharecropping and turn to music to entertain the farmers and others around him. On homemade instruments he played guitar and wrote songs to perform in church and at gatherings.
A lot has been written about Small, including a biography Drink Small: The Life & Music of South Carolina's Blues Doctor by Gail Wilson-Giarratano (2014) which is available in our Local History collection and in eBook format through hoopla. You can also borrow Small’s album Tryin’ to survive at 75 from our CD collection. Small has also garnered tributes and awards throughout his career such as the Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Award, South Carolina’s highest honor for folk artists.
Photographs in our archive show Small receiving this award at the State House in 1990 where he played his distinctive Piedmont-style Blues for state legislatures (see photograph above) and received a standing ovation (see below).
We also have a photograph of Small in his Columbia home at his piano, where he appears to be more relaxed and in his element.
We have a few unique “artifacts” from Small’s career in our collection, including Rockefella’s calendars from 1988 and 1989 advertising Small’s appearances there. For those who are too young to remember, Rockefella’s was a night club in Five Points offering live music and no-frills drinks for college crowds and other locals.
Small had also been entertaining college students a generation prior, evidenced by a poster on display in the window of the UFO Club on Main Street in 1968. The UFO Club entertained counter-culture hippies and anti-war GIs during the Vietnam era, raising the eyebrows of local officials who eventually had the owners arrested and the club closed due to fear of anti-social behavior. Small was there, playing his Blues, probably paying no mind to the politics.
While still in high school Small began playing professionally with the gospel group The Golden Five. In 1955, Small moved to Columbia, living in the Liberty Hill section of town and performing with the Columbia-based gospel group The Spiritualaires. This group was well regarded in the gospel world and toured across the country, even playing at the Apollo Theater in New York city. In the late 1950s to 1960s Small began playing for college crowds at parties where his music crossed color-lines and proved danceable and entertaining to a wide audience.
In a 1985 interview, Small told a reporter for the Columbia Record that he was inspired by artists he heard on the WIS radio station program “In the Groove” which included the likes of John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and Lightning Slim (Otis Hicks). He also mentioned that a local musician named “Greenback,” whose real name was Roy Price, was an inspiration. Wondering who this man was, I found the 1948 SC death certificate for Roy Price, who was a farm hand living in Lee County, SC. He died on December 20 in a house fire at just 42 years old. He had worked picking cotton in Bishopville most of his life, but thanks to Small’s memories, we know he also played a mean guitar.
Also curious about the radio show “In The Groove,” I discovered that in the 1940s WIS Radio in Columbia programmed 15 minutes of music between 5 and 6 pm that catered to Black audiences. Since WIS did not employ Black DJs, white announcers for the station such as Jack Peterson, Charlie Bell and Mackie Quave ran the show. In a 1986 article in The State Magazine, Quave recalled that he used an on-air persona called “MQ” and spoke in a dialect during the show. He also stated that Jimmy Lee Wise, the station’s Black custodian, selected the music for the show.
An ad from June 3, 1944 issue of The Columbia Record announced that the WIS show “In the Grove” would feature a live performance of the Ink Spots and Ella Fitzgerald, who were performing that day at the Township Auditorium. The emcee of that radio show was a man named Bill Simmons. Big Elliott Wright, who at one time managed the famous Big Apple nightclub in Columbia, sold tickets for the show. Another 1944 ad for the “In The Grove” radio show stated that Louis Jordan’s “Ration Blues” was the most requested song by its audiences, who wrote in with great enthusiasm and regularity. I imagine these are the names of some of the musicians, DJ’s and music-promoters who influenced the young Drink Small through the airwaves.
I appreciate Small and his gifts. Also, I enjoy the way his memories bring to light the other artists of the 1940s and 1950s that inspired him.
Interested in reading more? Check out Drink Small’s biography on hoopla or find newspaper articles about Small and his career listed below, which you can read online with your library card through NewsBank. Or borrow his CD and just listen!
- “Drink Small” Columbia Record, April 29, 1985.
- “WIS-tful memories of AM days gone by” Ron Wenzell, The State Magazine, October 19, 1986
- “Drink Small is turning 60 and turning it out” Mike Miller, The State, January 28, 1993.
- “Gospel music program Sunday at Auditorium” The State, May 19, 1956.