An Old-Time Encyclopedia: In Memory of Kerry Blech (1947-2023)

The old-time music community lost one of its biggest champions this week. Kerry Blech died on Monday, Sept. 18, in Gainesville, Florida, and left behind an incredible legacy of musicianship, scholarship and fellowship.

Kerry left a lasting impact on those who knew him. Upon learning of his passing, I started to see remembrances of him on Facebook from the likes of Alice Gerrard, Chuck Levy, and many others.

I never never met Kerry in person, but even still he had a huge impact on my journey into old-time music. 

On the advice of Old-Time Herald editor Sarah Bryan, I began emailing Kerry in January 2018 in my quest to learn more about Ohio's old-time music history and the Kent State Folk Festival. Not only did he respond, but he provided me with a wealth of information and photos to help me in my research. He also connected with me others to reach out to learn more. 

He was an encyclopedia of old-time music knowledge, and he was so generous with his time and willing to share what he knew. 

Kerry became a fixture in the old-time scene in the late 1960s, when he began attending Kent State University in my home town. For the next two decades, he helped organize the annual Kent State Folk Festival, bringing in major acts such as Doc Watson, the New Lost City Ramblers, the Fuzzy Mountain String Band, Tommy Jarrell, the Red Clay Ramblers and the Highwoods String Band, as well as local performers like Joe LaRose with Gary Hawk and the Red Mule String Band ... and so many more. 

He later moved to Seattle, where he spent the next 22 years, and then to Gainesville, where he was presented the inaugural Tom Staley Award by the Florida State Fiddler's Association in 2018. 

Kerry was a skilled musician and played in several bands over the years, including the Rhythm Gorillas (Guerillas?), Hart & Blech and Streak of Lean. He also presented workshops about various tunes and musicians. There are several YouTube videos of Kerry playing and talking about tunes that I encourage you to check out. 

In the very first email I received from Kerry in 2018, he said, "I am glad to hear that you are checking out old-time fiddlers in Ohio." He also shared with me his story about how he got into old-time music. 

Kerry was born in East Cleveland in 1947, and his family moved to Parma a couple of years later. He attended St. Ignatius High School, where he said some of the priests played folk music.

"Some played recordings in study periods of folk music," he wrote. "I mainly majored in basketball at that time."

He attended one year of college at the University of Detroit, which he said "believe it or not, had quite a few serious traditional music followers/fans/practitioners." 

It was there that he learned about field recordings and started collecting. However, he was eager to move on. 

"I hated Detroit and transferred to Kent State, majoring in art," he said. "My second year there, I had a brand new art professor, Doug Unger, who told me about the Kent State Folk Festival," which he believed was in its second year. 

Kerry frequented coffee houses and other gatherings in Kent, where he met other likeminded students who preferred traditional music over the popular singer-songwriters of the time.  

"I got on the steering committee for the [Kent State Folk Festival] and worked on it for 10 years or so," he wrote. "After getting my M.A., I went to work (for the next 10 years) at the Kent Community Store, where I was in charge of the folk/traditional music sections. I also had a folk/trad radio show on WKSU for about five years."

Kerry moved to Seattle in the mid-1980s and from there to Gainesville. I'm sad I was too young to know him when I was growing up in Kent and that I never got the chance to meet him in person. In the two years or so that we corresponded, we shared more than 40 emails about Ohio old-time musicians, local festivals, tunes and life in general. I'm so grateful for his willingness to share his insights with me. 

I knew that Kerry had battled cancer and been diagnosed with Parkinson's. In one of the last messages he sent me, he mentioned how difficult it was getting to respond to emails. The outpouring of tributes to Kerry over social media from those who knew him is a testament to how beloved he was to his family, friends and the old-time community. Although he will be missed, his legacy will live on in those whose lives he touched. 

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