Click on the picture to go to the Shangri-la website where you can order the seven inch 33 of "Saddle Up My Pony/Green Lounge Shuffle," recorded live at Green's Lounge February 15, 1997, and the mini-book containing the full interview with Wilroy, with fine pictures by Janell Turner.

Here's a piece of the interview from June, 1998 with soon to be legendary bluesman Will Roy Sanders featured in Will Roy Sanders: The Last Living Bluesman book, which will be out in February, 1999, and will also be featured in a film documentary released with the same title in 1999. All contents copyright Shangri-la, Inc. 1999

And so, daddy used to come in & hear me playing cause I never did put it down hardly too much, & he set there listening at it a little while, ãBoy, you kinda know what you doing with that thang, now doncha?" Well, I didn't know, but after he said that, I thought I did! And so, he financially financed & bought me a steel guitar & got it for $14.00. Back in them times, things kind of cheap. And after I got it, I learned how to, started play things like I wanted to play it. And so he said to me, "I'll tell you whatcha do. (Friend of his had a '36 Ford). Go in there, take you a bath, put you on a coat, I want you to go with me." I said, "Ok." I said to my aunt, "I'm going with my daddy somewhere."

He carried me to Collierville (Tennessee). I got up there and some of everybody you could think of. Cause in Collierville, that was the only the closest place out of 50 miles that people had to come--closest store & anything you wanna come to but that's it; but you had to get all you wanted at that time, then you didn't, you know, can't come back next week some time, cause you didn't have no way. And so he carried me down to a place called Hole in the Ground. I go down there in the hole. I couldn't go in cause I wasn't old enough. There was a bank setting out there where they had a old pump house. A bank setting, I would get out on that bank & set down. I would go home every weekend half-blind! Couldn't hardly see nothing; them old women dipping their snuff. Get right in your face. "Play it, baby, play it!" I wouldn't say nothing; I didn't like that. I wouldn't say nothing, y'know, but I was blind; I couldn't see nothing. They come & put them nickels & dimes in the holes in your trousers. Boy, some time, they have it full.

I had an old string on it. Don't think they made no straps like this back there in those days. Had a string on there, that string would cut my shoulder. By the time I'd get it out & put it in my pocket, & them nickels & dimes had me wearing & tearing like children wearing Îem about halfway off, y'know. So, sometimes my daddy would get it, y'know. But I let him have it. He was always out there. If the liquor store was open, I could forget it. Cause it was some drunk up change. Cause I make 5, 6, 7 dollars in change. I would go to 3 way, fish fry, all of them things. There was 2 or 3 old guys who could play guitar, but, man, they was women hustlers. They didn't have time for it. But they come finally wanna play & they could play. They play a couple numbers, then get up & gone, go about their business. I never see Îem no more. You know, go outdoors somewhere, y'know. I have to take the show over, back over again. Man, I was having a good time!

I got so far off in music until I didn't wanna do nothing but just play music or go where music was. So B.B. King used to be up there in Moscow; Joe Hill Louis, Ford Nelson, 2 or 3 guys from Memphis used to go up there & play. Now I go up there. He carried big ole Lucille, so big & my arm wasn't as long as his; he let me play it. My arm be jacked way up in there, y'know. I couldn't half play it like I wanted. And I played a number or two & I thought I was doing something then, y'know.