Moses Rascoe

Acquiring his first guitar while living in North Carolina at the age of thirteen, Moses Rascoe waited more than fifty years before launching a professional career in Pennsylvania. During the long interval he earned his keep through day labor and long-haul trucking, performing only when the compensation amounted to “a dollar or a drink,” a detail he later shared with Jack Roberts for Living Blues. In the course of those decades he assembled an extensive repertoire that stretched from Brownie McGhee’s Piedmont blues to Jimmy Reed’s 1950s jukebox successes. Once he stepped away from trucking at sixty-five, he chose to test his prospects as a musician. Both the surrounding folk-music circles and festival programmers from Chicago to Europe responded with interest. His debut album appeared in 1987 as a live recording made at Godfrey Daniels, the Pennsylvania coffeehouse.