The subway musician is an icon of New York's (literal) underground music scene. Yet, sometimes the corridors of Gotham's underbelly play home and stage to a different breed of musician--Carolina Slim being chief among them.
Elijah Staley--better known by his stage name, Carolina Slim--strummed his electric guitar underground, not like the hacks who require two drinks for a performance, and for more than 20 years was a staple to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Music Under New York (MTAMUN)
MTAMUN arranges performances in subway stations like Union Square, Times Square, Grand Central Terminal, Bowling Green, Columbus Circle and so on, of which he happily turned into his own intimate blues hall.
Slim died on Sunday at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens. The funeral service was held at Merrick Park Baptist Church in Jamaica.
He was 87.
A sharecropper's son from Denmark, S.C., Slim played his electric guitar as the trains roared--to a traipsing crowd unsuspecting of his authority as ramblin' man
He played Avery Fisher Hall once but felt more compelled to take his music to the people directly, on their morning and evening commutes, who felt less than moved by his impromptu concerts.
"Don't get no respect in the subway," said Slim in an interview. "I mean what I say. You dig what I mean, O.K.?"
As another addition to Black History Month here at Classicalite, we remember and commemorate Carolina Slim and his presence as an omnipresent force strong enough to push the subways on their way home.
To wit, here is Mr. Slim performing "Knocking at my Door" (1951).
