Nat Riddles

Here's my friend Nat. Larry took this picture of him at Dan Lynch's . It was the last time I saw him alive.

Nat and I used to play in the streets of NYC. When we played in front of Penn Station I used to get there early. I'd set up my guitar and amp and start playing some blues. People would walk right past me; nobody would stop. But when Nat showed up it was like instant crowd. When he started blowin' that harp people couldn't help but stop. Business men who didn't have the time to stand still and listen, still threw money in my guitar case on the run. Bums gave us their pennies.

Here's a tune I recorded in my little spare bedroom back in the early '80s when I lived on west 24th street. It's me and Nat and Larry and Suds Sudsky on the drums. The only drum technique Suds practiced was drinkin' and playin' at the same time. He never played his floor tom; he just used it to hold his beer. I remember that we were drinkin' Jack Daniels when we recorded this on Larry's little - I think it was a Panasonic - tape recorder.

Lenny Kunstadt recorded about two albums worth of stuff at one of our Lynch's gigs; but it was never released; the EQ was screwed up, or something. Later he brought us into a studio in Brooklyn, and we recorded this and this with Andy Story.

Nat left NY sometime in the mid eighties after he got shot four times. He moved to Virginia. When he came back and jammed with us on New Year's Eve 1990/91 he said he wasn't feeling well. He thought he had a cold that just wouldn't go away. When he went back to VA he found out that he had leukemia. The picture at the top of this page was taken at Dan Lynch at a special "Celebration of Nat Riddles," put on by Lenny and Lynch's and everybody else. The last song I ever heard Nat play was "Goin' Down Slow". He died in August, 1991.

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Photo by Larry Ghiorsi