I found this picture of Lum Guffin [here at the wonderful Better Every Day ] and was taken with it not least because his name was not known to me!
I went searching and found this . . . .
On August 8, 1978 the Italian musicologist Giambattista Marcucci and the experimental film maker and musician Tav Falco paid a visit to Bartlett, Tennessee bluesman Columbus "Lum" "Lucky" Guffin at his home on a gravel lane that was called Guffin Lane. The home still stands today on what is now a public street called Guffin Road. The songs he played that day were released on the Italian Albatros label and later on Marcucci's own Mbirafon imprint in the excellent Blues at Home series. The film footage shot by Tav was made into this brief black-and-white documentary film called "Key to the Highway" which constitutes the best film footage that we have of Lum performing on guitar. The Guffin homestead appears briefly in the film. Lum also appears in the Big Legal Mess film "Memphis '69" which is finally available, but one suspects that more songs were performed than what was included. An earlier LP called "Walking Victrola" was recorded by Swedish blues researcher Bengt Olsson, and released on the British Flyright label in 1973. In addition to playing the guitar, mandolin and piano, Lum Guffin was also the leader of the United Sons and Daughters of Zion No. 9 Fife and Drum Band, based at Prosperity Missionary Baptist Church not far from his home. He played the fife, the snare and the bass drum. Only one recorded song of this band exists commercially (on the Old Country Blues compilation on Flyright/Birdman-O-Phone), and four songs exist in archival footage held by the University of Washington in Seattle. Lum Guffin died in Memphis in the summer of 1993.
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