Garfield Akers (possibly born James Garfield Echols, probably 1908 – c. 1959) was an American blues singer and guitarist. He had sometimes performed under the pseudonym "Garfield Partee". Information about him is uncertain, and knowledge of his life is based almost entirely on reports of a few contemporary witnesses.
Akers' extant recordings consist of four sides, which are nonetheless historically significant. His most well-known song was his debut single "Cottonfield Blues", a duet with friend and longtime collaborator Mississippi Joe Callicott on second guitar, based on a song performed by Texas blues musician Henry Thomas a few years earlier.
Biography
Early life
Akers came to Hernando, Mississippi, a small town near Memphis, Tennessee, as a young teenager, already playing guitar at the time. In Hernando he met Frank Stokes, who is now often considered the "father of Memphis blues"; together with him he performed as a songster (a form of itinerant musician), comedian and dancer in the Doc Watts and his Spoan's Linament Medicine Show, which toured the southern United States, in the mid to late 1910s. In the mid-1920s, he married Missie (birth name unknown); their marriage remained childless.
Also in the 1920s, he met guitarist Mississippi Joe Callicott, with whom he played well into his 40s and who was his second guitarist.
