Abner Wingate Jay (July 15, 1921 – November 4, 1993) was an American multi-instrumentalist from Georgia, best known for performing eccentric, blues infused folk music as a one man band. His idiosyncratic lyrics and style have led some to consider his work outsider music; he considered himself to be "the last working Southern black minstrel".
Reviewer Jon Dale has described his recordings as "one of the most individual takes on traditional song form to have risen from the 20th century". Releasing his recordings on his own label, Jay has also been described as a pioneer independent recording artist. Composer Anthony Braxton called Jay an "American Master".
Jay was born in Fitzgerald, Georgia. His grandfather was a slave in Washington County, Georgia. His grandfather was also a banjo player and imparted a vast repertoire of old-time and folk songs to Abner. Abner Jay began playing guitar and later banjo in medicine shows at the age of 5, and also performed for white plantation owners. He joined the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, and in 1932 joined the rival Silas Green from New Orleans tent show. From around 1935, he performed as a one-man band. In his twenties, he survived throat cancer, resulting in his distinctive bass voice. He also sang with a jubilee quartet, The Sunlight Four, and during World War II toured with his band, the Jay Brothers band.
Jay also worked as a booking agent for Little Richard and James Brown, and briefly led his own rock and roll band, Big Abner Jay. In the early 1960s, he tried to start a career as a singer on Broadway in New York, but after that failed to materialize - and having some 16 children to support - he instead established himself as a live performer in clubs in and around Atlanta. From 1974, he performed on the college circuit and in the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida.
In 1982, Jay was interviewed over seven hours by writer Jas Obrecht. The interview was published in Guitar Player magazine that year, drawing wider attention to Jay. Jay also, at various times, ran a restaurant and managed nightclubs. In later years he held a residency, playing shows and selling his LPs and cassette tapes released on his own label, Brandie Records, at Tom Flynn's Plantation Restaurant in Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Jay's song repertoire included field songs, Stephen Foster songs, Pentecostal hymns and minstrel tunes. He performed original material that was mostly secular, and subjects ranged from politics, relationships, drugs, war, the bible, the 1969 Moon landing, ethnomusicology, Southern culture and depression. Common instruments on Jay's recordings include harmonica, drum kit, a six-string banjo (that Jay claimed was made in 1748), and the "bones", which were chicken and cow bones that had been bleached in the sun and used to create percussion.
He once described himself as the "last working Southern black minstrel", and in a self-penned leaflet handed out at concerts, he expanded on his biography with claims that he was the "World's Champion Cotton Picker and Pea Picker, World's Fastest Tobacco Crapper, World's Greatest Jaw Bone Player, World's Fastest Mule Skinner and The World’s Worse Business Man. He died at a veterans' hospital in Augusta, Georgia, in 1993, aged 72. After his death, record label owner Eric Isaacson said of Jay: "He had this whole image of himself as this ancient troubadour who was playing this forgotten kind of music, even though in reality most of the songs and styles were very unique to just him."Anthony Braxton, renowned American composer and philosopher, called Jay an "American Master".
For many years, Jay released his music and monologues in editions of less than 500, through his own record label, Brandie Records (so-named for his daughter). He released eight albums himself. In 2003 Subliminal Sounds from Sweden released a compilation of his work titled One Man Band, which had been out of print since the 1970s, drawing from three of Jay's best recordings. In the following years there were more compilations of his work. “Folk Song Stylist was released in 2010 and in 2021 Mississippi Records again released another compilation titled I Don't Have Time To Lie To You.
(Edited from Wikipedia)
Here’s one of the only existing videos of Jay performing before his death in 1992.