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Brazos, Texas, bottom land native Mance Lipscomb called himself a songster and a farmer and he wasn't pleased by anyone who called him a guitarist, Blues singer or sharecropper. But I can attest that he certainly could sing the Blues, and very well.
The songster tradition preceded the Blues, but no one knows by how many years. We do know that the Blues owes much to the songsters of the 19th Century. They came before there was any such thing as copyright law or any concept of any one person 'owning' any music.
According to the Austin American-Statesman,
"Though songsters might incorporate blues into their repertoires, as did Lipscomb, they performed a wide variety of material in diverse styles, much of it common to both black and white traditions in the South, including ballads, rags, dance pieces (breakdowns, waltzes, one and two steps, slow drags, reels, ballin' the jack, the buzzard lope, hop scop, buck and wing, heel and toe polka), and popular, sacred, and secular songs."
Born Beau De Glen Lipscomb near Navasota, Texas, in about 1895, Mance - a name he took because it was short for emancipation - was the son of an ex-slave father and Choctaw mother. He stands apart from other Folk and Blues artists his age who were "rediscovered" in the early 1960s in that he had never recorded before 1961 and lived most of his life farming and playing only locally, often with another songster named Sam Rogers.
It was on a radio interview I heard him making the statement about not wanting to be called a Blues singer. Hence it's rather surprising that his autobiography was called Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman. When you hear some of his numbers you can help but think "Blues." Yes he did songs like "Shine on Harvest Moon," but his biggest recording was a version of "Trouble in Mind."
He became a major figure in the Folk-Blues clubs in the 1960s and early 1970s and also was much in demand by Folk and Blues festivals. Mance passed away in 1976 and should be remembered as an important figure for the influence he had on many young musicians. When you listen to Leon Redbone, you know he had an impact.