Blind Apple Strudel

I recently purchased an old accoustic archtop guitar that was owned by the famous Delta Bluesman, Blind Apple Strudel. Strudel, born Wilson Shartrell Strudel, was well known around the South. He played in juke joints and bars from Texas to Georgia and everywhere in between. Strudel was born to unwed sharecroppers, Willie Strudel and Monippe Calhoun in Egypt, Georgia in around 1902. Strudel also performed under the aliases Blind Lemon Meringue, Blind Rum Tonic, and James Johansonervickski.

Strudel was born blind, deaf and mute. He picked up the guitar at an early age and taught himself to play by senses of touch, taste and smell. By the age of six Strudel was making a little money playing gin joints around his home town. In 1910 Strudel hooked up with the "Traveling Skunk Band" and began to play all around the lower South. While on a gig in Huntsville, Alabama Strudel met and fell in love with Shi-Thead Membrain, a male stripper and jazz singer who billed him/herself as "Delores El Cajonies". Strudel and Cajonies started touring together billed as "Strudel and Cajonies." In 1923 the pair cut a record for Down and Out Records titled "The Cajonies Blues". It went straight to the top of the blues charts and stayed there for eighteen weeks. After that Strudel and Cajonies made record after record. They all sold well and Strudel and Cajonies became quite well off for the times.

Strudel and Cajonies continued to tour and play venues across the South until Cajonies death in 1933. While in a bar in Waco, Texas Cajonies died in a violent toilet paper accident. He/She was buried in an unmarked grave in Waco, Texas. After Cajonies tragic death Blind Apple Strudel was never quite the same. He continued to tour, but stopped recording. Strudel began to depend upon alcohol and drugs to get him through the day. He became addicted to Tylenol and Afrin Nasal Spray and was never able to kick the habit.

As his fortunes declined through the 1940's and 1950's Strudel became more and more reclusive. He toured only sporatically in the late fifties and began drifting around the South hopping freight trains and bumming rides from truckers in exchange for "special services". For a while in the early 1960's Strudel worked as a fudge packer for Asinine Industries in Nashville. He left that job after only a few months because of "artistic differences".

Strudel was found dead in a motel room in Cairo, Georgia in 1963. The only possessions that he had with him at the time were the above mentioned guitar, a picture of El Cajonies, seventeen empty bottles of nasal spray, a few empty bottles of Tylenol, an empty quart bottle of Schlitz Malt Liquor and thirteen cents.

The guitar changed hands from time to time and finally ended up in an auction in Augusta, Georgia in 2007 where I purchased it along with documentation and several pictures of Strudel and Cajonies. The guitar is a bit banged up. Due to Strudel's condition he often walked into objects and fell off stages. Inside the guitar is an inscription that reads, "Happy birthday to my blind, deaf and mute lover, all my love, huggs and kisses, Shi-Thead."

I plan to make a gift of this guitar to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Macon, Georgia for their Blind Apple Strudel display.