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Featured Musician

THE GREY GHOST

Bastrop-born Roosevelt Thomas Williams (1903-1996), also known as the "Grey Ghost, is one of the legends of vintage Barrelhouse Blues. Williams took to the road and, like other itinerant musicians in the area, followed the cotton crop. He rode the rails all over Texas and into Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico. He liked riding trains or, as he described them, "the freights." It was during this period that he acquired the nickname, "the Grey Ghost," which stayed with him throughout his life. He would hop an open freight car on a train headed to a gig, with his overalls on over his stage clothes. When he arrived, he would hide his overalls in the bushes and appear as if from nowhere. When the show was finished, he would slip away in similar fashion. Williams said, "People would ask me ‘Man, where'd you come from? We never see you arrive, and we never see you leave.' And I'd say, ‘I'm just like a ghost. I come up out of the ground and then I go back in it.' "

The Grey Ghost enjoyed a renaissance in his later years, playing a regular gig at Austin's Continental Club and winning international acclaim for his work.