Willie Green

This is an article I wrote for class last semester, but it is still very viable and relevent. It is about a musician in the area who really is a hidden gem. Anyone who lives this close to this guy should feel obligated to go see him play. Enjoy.

Willie Green does not just play the blues—the blues seem to manifest somewhere between his larynx and his guitar-picking fingers and exude from every pore of his being.

From the tilt of his fedora to the rasp in his voice, Willie Green is the delta blues, a last vestige of a dying creature, a blues man with authenticity and verisimilitude. He performs at a restaurant in Cross Creek, a little town 20 minutes outside of Gainesville.

When you turn onto County Road 235 and begin the final, eight-mile stretch into Cross Creek, you might as well be entering Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ The Yearling.

As you pull up to the restaurant, which adopted Rawlings’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel's name, you can not help feeling like you’re in the woods of north Florida sometime in the 1940s.

“I felt like I had time-warped,” said Matt Garvin, a University of Florida student and patron of The Yearling, “I'm not sure what it felt like to be around these parts back then, but this has got to be pretty close.”

Once inside The Yearling, the first thing you notice, besides the contrast of a bright Florida afternoon and the dim lighting of the restaurant, is the sound pouring from the main restaurant. That is where Willie works.

In a chair that looks older than he is, sits Willie Green. On this Sunday he wears a button-up dress shirt, weathered slacks and an old, felt fedora. His guitar, which he plays furiously with one calloused thumb, is perched on his knee as a metal brace holds his harmonica in place so he can play both instruments simultaneously.

It’s in this old chair, with a pillow propped in back for comfort, that Willie plays four days a week, for hours at a time. A tip jar sits beside a bag for his instruments’ accessories. Willie takes requests, covers old blues tunes and plays original music from time to time.

He has an acoustic and electric guitar, which he plays with a PVC pipe slide, coupled with a small amplifier that rests like an old friend at his feet.

Seventy-two-year-old Willie was born in Montgomery, Ala. He left home when he was 14 to pick crops up and down the east coast for his uncle, a contractor.

While picking crops and listening to music in the local “jive-joints” at night, Willie learned to play the blues harp, or harmonica, and guitar.

“No one taught me to play,” said Willie. “I taught myself. It's not like it is today.”

Willie, a self-proclaimed “Chuck Berry man,” started playing rock 'n' roll and eventually opened for John Lee Hooker and Eric Clapton. But Willie is best known for the blues.

Watching Willie sing about love and loss, you can not help but take something away from the experience. He seems to offer a small part of himself or his past to the people who listen, but his real allure is something in his face and eyes. There is a sadness there which makes Willie singing the blues seem like the real thing.

“You really can't see that kind of thing anymore,” Garvin said. “You get the feeling that Willie and older blues artists are the last of a dying breed. It's sad to really think about it. But while he's here, it is the kind of thing you have to appreciate and respect.”

The recent history of The Yearling restaurant goes hand-in-hand with the history of Willie Green. The restaurant has been around for 52 years; however, it was closed from 1992 to 2002 for renovations and general upkeep projects.

In 2002, Willie Green went through tough times and was doing manual labor for the owner of the Yearling. The manager heard Willie could play the blues, and he brought him in to perform when the restaurant re-opened. Willie has been doing just that for the past five years.

“Willie keeps about the same hours as we do now—Thursday through Sunday,” said Terry Morris, a hostess at The Yearling. “One of the cooks and a manager drive him in from Ocala everyday.”

You get the feeling that The Yearling is a second home for Willie, equipped with another surrogate family. Everyone refers to Willie by his first name as he strolls back and forth from the restaurant to the lounge in between his sets. It seems a place of re-birth and sanctuary for the old blues man.

The Yearling itself is a unique restaurant. It is divided into three sections. There is a main restaurant area where Willie performs and most patrons dine, a cocktail lounge and maybe most interestingly, what can only be described as a north Florida museum in the back.

There are shelves of old books, a vast antique collection and a large number of vintage style Coke machines scattered around the back room. The owner loves the Civil War era and the book The Yearling, said Morris, and the decor reflects that.

The Yearling is open Thursday-Sunday, and Willie performs almost everyday. The restaurant is about 20 miles southeast of Gainesville and is equipped with lodges for guests who want to carry the experience overnight.

For Willie, The Yearling has been a place of salvation, peace and employment; he seems to belong there, sitting in his chair doing what he loves -- playing and telling his story for anyone who cares to listen.