James “Butch” Cage

b. 16 March 1894, Hamburg, Mississippi, USA, d. 1975, Zachary, Louisiana, USA. Butch Cage relocated to Louisiana following a great 1927 floods, and worked well at numerous menial jobs, interesting his neighbours at weekend celebrations and, if indeed they had been music artists, playing alongside them. After becoming documented in 1959, Cage and his partner Willie B. Thomas had been a sensation in the 1960 Newport Folk Event. Cage had started his musical profession on fife, and was also a good guitarist, but his primary device was the fiddle. He previously learned to try out the device in 1911 from two seniors music artists, and his playing maintained the rasping dissonances of African fiddle music. His repertoire encompassed spiritual music, blues and well-known music, and was a fundamental element of the life span of his community.