Gitlo Lee

"Gitlo" Lee is from two worlds: one that his father, a fundamentalist minister, taught him, and the other, the beloved juke joints ,he found across the tracks. Born in a rural turpentine farm in the Deep South, Gitlo built his first guitar at a very young age and began the journey away from his devoutly Christian family. One of fourteen children, he worked the fields and was nicknamed "Gitlo" by a foreman, who said, "You sure know how to git low." The love of music prevailed, as he sneaked out to hear the musicians playing what he "could feel what they were doing."

Opportunity knocked when the well-known blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson came to town and needed a guitar player. At only 13, Gitlo was an accomplished picker, learned from Williamson, and was asked to hit the road with his band. That plan came to a screeching halt when his folks vetoed the idea, in fear that their young son would be exposed to corruption. Feeling that he was "already a grown dude a 12 and 13 years old," Gitlo did rebound from that disappointment by touring with a road evangelist, but found reconciliation difficult, between the spoken word and the actions of the "bad preacher." He continued to pursue the blues, and worked with Ricky Calloway, "The King of Florida Funk," before he was twenty. His original tunes were influenced by T-Bone Walker, Albert Collins, and B.B. King, and draw reverence from crowds today.

Playing the Chitlin' Circuit for over half a century (the Chitlin' Circuit was primarily by, for, and about black people), he released his first album, Comin' Out The Hole, in 2016. The CD was produced in his Louisiana-based studio, Chuckie Productions. With lyrics about the swampy region in which he was born, large women, beer, or silk sheets, his soul shines through the picking and the riffs. “If I couldn’t do this,” he says, “I would ball up and die.”