After almost 90 years, Rhiannon Giddens revived the song “Last Kind Words” by the obscure country-blues singer Geeshie Wiley, a blues tune which was highly uncommon regarding arrangement back then. The blues historian Don Kent, who was one of those scholar-collectors who spent the second half of the 20th century finding and curating the forgotten black music of the ’20s and ’30s, described Wiley’s song as "one of the most imaginatively constructed guitar arrangements of its era." Eighty-five years later Rhiannon Giddens opened her debut album “Tomorrow Is My Turn” with her rendition of “Last Kind Words.” A highly unique artist herself, Giddens upgraded the original song with her exquisite ability to arrange stringed instrument, but she stayed true to the spirit of rural blues. The involvement of T Bone Burnett, the legendary producer/musician, helped a lot in shaping the sound of the entire album, including this particular song.
Geeshie Wiley was an American country blues singer and guitar player, born c.1908, who recorded six songs for Paramount Records, issued on three records in 1930 and 1931. Don Kent, who was known for his liner notes, which transcended or at least transformed that genre, said of Wiley that she "may well have been the rural South's greatest female blues singer and musician." Little is known of her life, and there are no known photographs of her. In the liner notes to the LP "Mississippi Masters: Early American Blues Classics 1927-35” Kent wrote the following statement, that might just be the best testament of Geeshie Wiley’s legacy:
“If Geeshie Wiley did not exist, she could not be invented: her scope and creativity dwarfs most blues artists. She seems to represent the moment when black secular music was coalescing into blues. Her repertoire included early raggy songs like Pick Poor Robin Clean and Come On Over To My House, but delivered with more punch; songs such as Last Kind Words that probably predate World War I but handled as befitting a blues sensibility; and state of the art country blues with imaginative arrangements.
Her guitar technique is unusual: her use of an A-minor chord in Last Kind Words is rare for a rural blues artist and her adoption of a riff in A normally associated with Texas artists shows a shrewd appreciation for exciting sounds.
Moreover, despite her sensual voice, the persona she presents is as tough as Charley Patton: money before romance and she sweetly says, while extolling her sexual charms, that she's calmy capable of killing you. Wiley apparently came up to record with Elvie Thomas, another guitarist said to be from Palmers Crossing, Mississippi, near Hattiesburg. Her guitar duet with Wiley on Pick Poor Robin Clean shows her to be a less forceful musician but her hauntingly beautiful vocal on Motherless Child Blues reveals a powerful poignancy among the most sublime in American music.
Equalling the vocal with exquisite force and imagination is the guitar arrangement in the key of E, probably played by Geeshie Wiley. This shows traces of a northern Mississippi influence, but the B7th section is without parallel in rural blues. A very similar arrangement is used on Skinny Legs Blues. the lyrics are from Boar Hog Blues, but the melody used by Geeshie Wiley bears only a token resemblance to that song. Wiley's masterpiece, Last Kind Words, played in the key of E, is one of the most imaginatively constructed guitar arrangements of its era and possible one of the most archaic. Although the lyrics date it to the late World War I era, its eight-bar verse structure appears to be older. The opening A minor chord that leads directly into the same A riff employed by Texas artists is unique, and the thumb rolls in the B7th part echo Charley Patton's Green River Blues."
