Talk:Geeshie Wiley

Untitled
John, I live in Oxford, Mississippi, and I know someone here named Herbert Wiley who says Geeshie is buried here in Oxford. You should definitely talk to him. He ran a shoe shop here before getting into soul singing with his band, The Checkmates. This could be your "holy grail"!Jbshowah (talk) 14:21, 17 October 2008 (UTC)Justin Showah

Help me Geeshie Wiley Fans!
I have undertaken an impossible research project: Find out something more about Geeshie Wiley. Anything at all would be fantastic, finding her grave would be like a holy grail for me. And yes, I am aware that this is well near impossible. And I also know that original research does not a wikipedia article make.

But I am asking for the help of anyone who understands what it feels like to hear Wiley's songs and be forever haunted by every note. So if you know anything, talk about it here please. If you have advice for me about this research, please share. The citations for this article are lacking, but there are no good sources that I know of so far for Wiley's life and music. So I would also be very glad to hear from those who have written this article about where they got their information, specifically about Ishman, the recordings being for paramount records, and so on. How, for instance, do we even know she was in a medicine show? And what is the source? Thanks to all those who worked on this difficult to write article, and please feel free to give me any advice or leads you can. And again, I am very serious about this research, and I will not stop until I run into every last brick wall there is. Thanks again. --John —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.254.205.53 (talk) 08:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Someone will probably do a more thorough job of it, but I added some information from the New York Times article on the duo.173.228.6.164 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 18:27, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Nearly everything in the biography section is wrong, btw, and it pretty much needs to be ripped out and rewritten. She was born in Louisiana, lived in Texas, and may have died in Oklahoma but had nothing to do with Mississippi or South Carolina, her given name was Lillie Mae not Wadie, the Wiley came from her (possibly common-law) husband Thornton Wiley, and the other listed romantic entanglements were as likely fictional as the rest of the Ishman Bracey biographical details. It really needs to be ripped out by the roots and rewritten, which I am considering, but not sure it is worth it given that tends to lead to cranky editors reverting their precious domain.173.228.6.164 (talk) 23:20, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Rewrite of bio
I made numerous, mostly minor changes in wording, paragraphing, and sentence order, with reference to the sources cited in the article, mainly Gioia and Sullivan. I added some new information derived from the McCormick interview with L. V. Thomas as reported by Sullivan and from Sullivan's further research, which seems to be either sufficiently well established or stated in sufiiciently tentative terms.

I think that the nickname is insufficent evidence of origins in South Carolina or Georgia. I left in the part about the Gullah, but I also added a qualification about the use of the nickname in the South and the claim by Thomas that she bestowed the nickname on Wylie.

I am not aware of incorrect information in the article, given the tentative tone in which it is presented. some of the information may be dubious, particularly the statement about the medicine show, which I have seen only in the AllMusic bio ("She was rumored to have worked . . .", which is unattributed).

I attempted to add a reference to what I broke out as the second paragraph of the bio, because I think the statement calls for citation. I am new at this, and I don't know how to use "ref name", so the full citation is given for both reference [2] and reference [4]. I hope someone else can fix this numbering problem.

I suggest deletion of the last sentence of the bio, because it has already been stated clearly enough, and because I have been unable to find any information about Geeshie Wiley in the source cited at the end of the sentence. Jwicklatz (talk) 19:04, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Article
An article published in the New York Times, April 13, 2014, has a long apparantly well researched section on Geeshie's life. Author is JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/13/magazine/blues.html?_r=0

It would appear that the article needs to be substantially re-written. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.86.203.107 (talk) 04:24, 8 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I've made an attempt at re-editing the biographical section, lead and infobox, to give greater weight to the research by McCormick and Sullivan published in the New York Times. Happy to discuss further.   Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:29, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

The Last Kind Word (song) should have a Wiki page
Hi All, I think The Last Kind Word (song) should have a Wiki page-- I am not up to it, but someone else perhaps could do it. Thanks. SaturnCat (talk) 20:08, 16 September 2018 (UTC)