Veteran Beverly 'Guitar' Watkins remains a fierce performer

Beverly "Guitar" Watkins is a black woman who has been active in the blues world since the '50s. Because of that, she has stories to share through her music.

Drop her name in conversation with Charleston blues artists and fans and you'll hear two things: She rocks, and she's lived the blues.

"She's from another era," Blues Bash organizer Gary Erwin said. "She is cool."

"She kicks butt," Juke Joint Johnny said. "She's engaging. She's entertaining, she was born with an umbilical cord to American blues."

Beverly turns 70 this year. She's opened for Ray Charles, James Brown and Aretha Franklin. She's survived lung cancer and a minor heart attack.

But nothing has stopped her yet, and she has no intentions of slowing down. She knows she'll surprise and entertain you with her performance.

"I talk to the crowd, I do a little James Brown dancing, you know, so it's kinda like people don't know what to expect when they see me coming on," she said.

The blues is a chance for Watkins to share her experiences and feelings. And to perform.

"I would say ministry also, but to me, it's a feeling, an experience," Watkins said. "I've heard a lot of definitions as sad. Blues is not sad. Not to me. It's an experience. Things you have experienced in your life."

Even she doesn't know what her shows will be like. Before every show, she will take time for quiet and prayer, and then she jumps into the performance.

"When I get on stage, it's like electrifying, you know, I light up and just get into the crowd. I've had peoples come up to me after the show who say, 'You know, when I came to your show, hey, I was down and out, but now I feel so uplifted and good.' And you know that's what I call ministering to the public."

Watkins is from Atlanta and says she was born with the gift of music.

Growing up, she went to barn dances in Georgia and watched her family performing.

"My granddaddy would take me with him and I had my little guitar sitting there beside him never knowing that I was going to, that it would grow up in me," Watkins said.

She started playing guitar in the Billy West Stone and the Down Beats Combo in eighth grade. But she didn't learn how to properly tune her guitar until she started playing with Piano Red and the Interns in the '60s. With Piano Red, she not only improved her guitar skills, but she also opened shows for James Brown and Ray Charles, performing in venues from the Apollo Theatre in New York to smaller shows in Natchez, Miss.

She played with different bands over the years but started playing and singing by herself by the late 1980s. In the 1990s, she started working with the Music Maker Relief Foundation, released her first CD and starting touring internationally.

Beverly's importance in the Blues Bash might be overlooked, but she and other older musicians "have the historical context for the music," Erwin said. "They have lived the blues life, lived the culture. Some of the younger people have picked up and adopted the culture, but these people lived it."