Songs > Bluesta

Want to take Bluesta home?

To buy Bluesta, from the jukebox on this page, click on the shopping cart symbol to go to the  Bandcamp sales page. You can also buy it here from Apple Music or from most on-line distributors. You can also purchase indiviudal tracks.  

Give Bluesta as a gift! Contact me to directly to purchase a download card so your blues buddies can enjoy it too.

The legend of Blind Belly Cracklin

Throughout the Bluesta album, a collection of acoustic songs appear and almost as quickly are finished. They are attributed to a little-known artist named Blind Belly Cracklin, an enigmatic man who has been labelled by some as the great uncle of Australian blues music. Legend speaks of a haggard old man who roamed the streets of Sydney in the depression years, singing and playing for his supper wherever he laid his hat. Some stories say he was an American plantation owner from the deep south who had ended up in Australia by a series of misfortunes. Other tales tell of an eccentric English Lord who had fallen from grace with the family. Having been sent to the USA to administer their farming interests, he had supposedly become infatuated with the juke joints and wild living of Mississppi and fallen into disrepute, whereupon he was sent, in disgrace again, to the far flung former penal colony of Australia.

One day, whilst trawling through a charity shop, I stumbled on a box of old and unlabelled 78 records. My curiosity was sparked and I purchased them for 20c each. After much searching, I was able to find a record player capable of playing them and to my astonishment, a haunting voice came through the speakers. Most of the tracks were too scratched to be playable or of too poor quality to be listenable. However a few tracks had survived the years and these have been painstakingly recreated and put onto the Bluesta album in homage to Australia's first bluesman