S. E. Rogie

Palm-wine guitar

Sooliman Ernest Rogers, known as Rogie, was born in 1926 in Fonikoh in the Pujehun District of Sierra Leone and died on July 4, 1994, aged 68, at Lewisham Hospital in south London. His father Mboima Kpaka was a community leader, and at seven he paid for basic schooling by cutting and selling firewood. In the 1940s he was apprenticed as a tailor in Freetown with an elder brother, and clients who were musicians sparked his interest in the guitar; he ran a travelling tailor's shop and played free at night. Largely self-taught, he was influenced by palm-wine musicians and by his brother's records of the American country singer Jimmie Rodgers, from whom he took plucking, vocals and yodeling. From 1952 to 1966 he worked in the Accountant General's Office. He sang in English, Krio, Mende and Temne.

In the early 1960s he launched his own label and distributed the records himself. A 1964 single, "Waitin Make You Do Me So" with "Some One Some Where", was credited to S. E. Rogers. In 1965 he formed The Morningstars, but the musicians left after two months for a better offer and he lost over half his investment. In 1973 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, took the surname Rogie because it sounded more African, per Wikipedia, and performed in California schools, receiving awards from the US Congress and Senate and from Berkeley and Oakland. African Lady (1975) and Mother Africa, I Won't Forget You (1979) came from this period.

In 1988 he moved to England at the invitation of the BBC Radio 1 DJ Andy Kershaw and bought a home in Finchley; he recorded a BBC session on March 17, 1988, played the Cambridge Folk Festival in 1989 and formed the Palm-Wine Tappers in 1991. Cooking Vinyl issued Palm Wine Guitar Music: The 60's Sound (1988). His final album, Dead Men Don't Smoke Marijuana, came on Real World on May 16, 1994, produced by Tchad Blake at Real World Studios in Box, Wiltshire, recorded in September 1993 and January 1994, with Danny Thompson on double bass. Entertainment Weekly's Ty Burr called it as mellow a monument as the man himself, and Bret Love of AllMusic a sweet, stirring testament to an undeservedly little-known talent. Taj Mahal reportedly said he learned from Rogie how to make guitar sounds resonate. His guitar loop from "Please Go Easy with Me" was sampled by Vampire Weekend on "Rich Man" (2019). Val Wilmer chose "My Lovely Elizabeth" among her ten tracks on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in February 2024.