Honoring Beverly "Guitar" Watkins
April 6, 1939 - October 1, 2019
As a middle schooler, I attended Girls Rock Camp ATL, an annual summer camp that works to create “an empowering and supportive community for self-identified girls and women, trans and gender-expansive people through music education, creative expression, and performance.”
It was where I learned to play guitar, drums, join a band and gain the confidence to perform a concert with my bandmates and fellow campers at our showcase.
Every day during our lunch break, a different band would come to perform for us, typically an all-woman band. My first and third years attending the camp, the one and only Beverly “Guitar” Watkins came to perform that Friday.
As for my first time seeing her perform, I just remember seeing this old Black lady just playing the Blues – very well, nonetheless – which illustrated that she’d been doing this a long time. It was when, she proceeded to put the guitar over and behind her head and started playing (like playing), that I fully understood why her moniker was simply “Guitar.”
Her New York Times eulogy featured this quote that describes my first impression of her perfectly: “She was like your sweet Southern grandma, unassuming and demure…But onstage, where she takes down the house, she’s a born entertainer, who made people scream and shout.”
As a Black girl who grew up in a predominantly white town in the suburbs of Metro-Atlanta and was one of the few Black girls at this summer camp, it was so dope to see a Black woman who was Georgia born and raised still killing it at the electric guitar.
Watkins also served as the inspiration for a playlist my parents created for me when I was little, called Kési Mix 1 + 2 (I recreated #1 on this Spotify playlist). I still play guitar a little bit and have recently picked up the bass guitar, so I think of her often as an early inspiration for me in music. And since my motto around here is that it’s always a good day to celebrate Black women: Happy birthday to Beverly “Guitar” Watkins 🎸💛
Additional Reading on her life and legacy: