Background
Rachell grew up in Brownsville, Tennessee.
Rachell grew up in Brownsville, Tennessee.
In 1958, during the American folk music revival, he moved to Indianapolis. He recorded for Delmark Records and Blue Goose Records. He was a capable guitarist and singer but was better known as a master of the blues mandolin.
He bought his first mandolin at age 8, in a trade for a pig his family had given him to raise.
He often performed with the guitarist and singer Sleepy John Estes. "She Caught the Katy," which he wrote with Taj Mahal, is considered a blues standard.
He appeared in the 1985 documentary film Louie Bluie (directed by Terry Zwigoff), about musician Howard Armstrong, performing with John Sebastian and the J-Band. By the mid-1990s, Rachell and Henry Townsend were the only blues musicians still active whose careers started in the 1920s.
Late in his life Rachell suffered from arthritis, which shortened his playing sessions, but he recorded an album just before his death, Too Hot for the Devil.