At least three blues performers adopted the stage name Guitar Slim, with Alec Seward marking the earliest of them. Born in Charles City, Virginia, on March 16, 1902, he grew up one of fifteen children and first grasped a guitar during his youth, soon performing regularly at neighborhood dances. At eighteen he relocated to New York with the goal of turning professional. There he formed lasting friendships with fellow Piedmont-style players Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. Although that acoustic approach was swiftly viewed as outdated beside the smoother urban blues then in vogue, Seward continued to favor his Carolina-rooted sound. He also encountered another Carolina transplant, Louis Hayes—known variously as Fat Boy Hayes and Jelly Belly—who likewise sought success in New York while clinging to the same country-blues idiom. The pair began appearing together under the names Blues Servant Boys, Guitar Slim & Jelly Belly, and the Backporch Boys. While Guitar Slim remained the alias most closely associated with Seward, he briefly recorded under several others, among them Blues Servant Boy, King Blues, and Georgia Slim. Over the following twenty years he performed and cut sides alongside Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, and the duo of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. Under his given name he issued the album Creepin' Blues on the Blueville label, supported on that session by a young Larry Johnson on guitar and harmonica. Throughout the rest of the 1960s Seward continued to play live whenever opportunities arose and appeared at the folk and blues festivals then gaining popularity. On May 11, 1972, he was admitted to a New York hospital, where he died of natural causes.
