Last year, Philly musician Randy Bowland was offered an unusual gig. A friend of a friend’s son, an aspiring actor, had just landed a big break in a Hollywood film. The role required him to portray a blues musician, which he was not.

So, this industry friend was calling him to inquire — on behalf of some unnamed movie producers — if Bowland would be willing to teach this young actor how to play the old-school slide guitar in a Mississippi Delta Blues style?

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“I thought it might be a tall order,” says Bowland, a Grammy-nominated songwriter and musician who specializes in funk, soul, and rhythm & blues. “That [style] is not even 100 percent in my wheelhouse.”

Bowland, despite his generous nature, was hesitant. But he did have plenty of contacts after decades in the music business, and offered to share them. Over a career spanning five decades, he’s been the music director, co-producer, and co-writer for artists like Jill Scott, Gerald Levert, and Kem, along with playing on stage or in studio with  the O’Jays, Sting and more. Bowland offered up the names of some other suitable candidates, but his friend reassured him that the actor only needed to look the part, not sound like a pro.

Once he agreed, Bowland discovered that his friend was dead wrong. The actor did in fact have to play the slide guitar convincingly. He’d be all over the original soundtrack. And this role was especially pivotal to the movie.

Right before filming began, 20-year-old actor Miles Caton would spend two months travelling to Philly for training with Bowland, which he’s mentioned in recent interviews with Vanity Fair and others. They met weekly at Cambridge Sound Studios, a space owned by longtime friend and collaborator Jim Salamone, which is located inside the former Alpha International Records building. At one point, the movie’s production team threw a wrench into the rhythm they’d established, insisting that Caton play a specific, rare guitar and not one he’d been getting used to. “Ryan wants him to have this type of guitar,” Bowland says. “And I’m thinking, Who’s this Ryan guy?”

Of course, it was Ryan Coogler, the film’s director, who has obliterated all kinds of box-office records with Sinners this year. While the film has earned acclaim from both high-brow critics and mainstream fans (97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), Caton, in his film debut, has been uniquely singled out for his performance as Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore, a blues prodigy who channels supernatural forces through his playing.

Bowland, 61, was the perfect fit to help create the character after all. In some notable ways, his own journey as a musical wunderkind has paralleled that of the character, whose music endures over trauma and evil. “As far as the guitar, it’s just a part of me, an extension of me. Whether I’m doing it to make a living or I’m doing it just to play for myself, that’s part of my bloodline.”

“Philly is a soulful town, it’s a real town.” — Randy Bowland

No spoilers!

If you haven’t seen Sinners yet, it’s almost an indescribably one-of-a-kind movie. Set in 1932 Mississippi, the story takes place on the opening night of a juke joint in the Jim Crow South. From there, it descends into an audacious — and, in my humble opinion, breathtaking — allegory about racism, integration, Black cultural survival, and more. Oh, did I mention the vampires? There’s also lots of them.

Above all, however, the movie centers itself around an idea that Citizen contributor and WURD Radio host James Peterson described in a recent story about the film: “Sinners is, at its heart, about how Black music — and by extension, Black life — endures, transforms, and regenerates under impossible conditions.”

In the movie, the blues are treated as a uniquely transcendent art form. During a pivotal scene that required the slide-guitar training, Caton’s Preacher Boy summons ancestral forces as he tears down the juke joint. The implication is that old-time blues players have a kind of superpower, like the griots of West Africa, with their ability to maintain and express a cultural legacy that stretches back for generations.

The Delta Blues slide guitar was born out of the harsh conditions of Jim Crow. It’s an extremely expressive way of playing but also a wildly unpredictable one to master. You forgo a pick in favor of plucking the strings, as a hand clutching the neck employs a “slide” along the frets. (A slide is a cylindrical tool that fits on a finger, often made of brass or glass, and allows for dramatically quick changes to the pitch and melody — though it can feel ungainly for newbies.) You also need to beat the guitar with your thumb to create a “backbeat” as you play. All in all, the Delta style allows a solo performer to mimic the sound of a full band, assuming it’s done right.

“The mechanics of it are a bit challenging, because you’re everything. There’s a whole different science to it, and a different tuning,” says Bowland. “You have to learn to feel the guitar until it becomes a part of you.”

Caton was an accomplished singer prior to landing the role, but he could hardly play guitar. “I had a guitar teacher, Randy Bowland who helped me with the blues specifically,” he said during a recent interview. Throughout the movie’s press tour, Caton made a point of crediting Bowland’s tutelage. “Every week, I would travel to Philly on the Amtrak, and I would go to his studio and practice, practice, practice.” he said, “to lock in and learn the fundamentals of the blues style.”

While Caton said the process was “really dope” his teacher found it to be a rewarding challenge. Because Caton did not have any playing habits to unlearn, Bowland says, the intricacies of the slide guitar came more naturally to him. Although Bowland has yet to see the film — he was scheduled to a few weeks ago, but his wife had a medical emergency (she’s since recovered) — he’s been keeping tabs on Caton’s ascent. At points in the publicity tour, the actor has performed live, showing off his new skills.

Bowland likes what he’s seen.

“I did get a chance to see him doing a couple of little performances where he’s playing and singing, and you can tell he’s really playing,” says Bowland. “I’m proud of him.”

Origin story

Bowland felt a powerful pull from the guitar at a young age. He grew up in North Philly, only a few blocks away from Bill Cosby’s childhood home. Bowland recalls watching the Cosby-produced animated series Fat Albert and viewing it as a “cartoon version of how I grew up.”

On his 7th birthday, his parents called him inside from playing with friends and gifted him a guitar. He’d fallen in love with bands like the Beatles and The Jackson 5, but the toy guitars never satisfied him. “I saw that guitar sitting on the couch, and I felt like my life changed in that moment,” he says. “I saw something that I connected with. I saw an opportunity.”

At 9 years old, Bowland began performing at jazz nightclubs. He sought out older musicians in the neighborhood, learning their tricks and asking to play with them. Some of them would chaperone him to gigs. Although it was unorthodox, Bowland’s parents supported his path as a preteen. His mother, a classically trained pianist, bought him outfits to make him look more professional, even as he inevitably stood out. “The spotlight would always be on me,” he recalls. “Everybody’s making a fuss because there was this kid playing a guitar that’s bigger than him and he’s playing all the solos from all the records that we know!”

After graduating from Benjamin Franklin High School as a music major, Bowland had a moment of “divine intervention.” While working a post-graduate summer job as hotel housekeeper, he nearly fainted while on the job. It turned out he had cancer. “The long and short of it is that they found that I had Hodgkin’s disease,” he says. After 11 months of chemo and radiation, the lymphoma eventually went into remission. “The treatment was pretty primitive back then. It was only two years after they found a cure for my kind of cancer,” he says. “So I just made it under the wire.”

The week after he got the all-clear from his doctors, Bowland received an audition to perform on a USO tour. He’d go to Greenland for weeks. It was the first time he was making real money, and travelling, and he loved it. Now, more than 40 years later, Bowland looks back on his brush with death as the nudge that he needed to go after his dreams. “If I hadn’t gotten sick, it’s like my whole trajectory would have been different.”

“The guitar, it’s just a part of me, an extension of me. Whether I’m doing it to make a living or I’m doing it just to play for myself, that’s part of my bloodline.” — Randy Bowland

A “pro’s pro”

The story behind Bowland’s Grammy nomination for songwriting was a lot like his involvement in Sinners. “It was unexpected and kind of a fluke,” the ever humble Bowland says.

In 2007, Bowland got a call from a producer looking for fresh material. Like he’s done from time to time throughout his career, Bowland joined an ad hoc ensemble of musicians in a studio. They spent a day together seeing what they could come up with. “We got there, knocked out four ideas after a nine-hour rehearsal with Jill Scott. We were just creating the music in the moment,” he says.

Months later, Bowland was busy recording an album with Jill Scott, when his co-writer and keyboard player from the previous session burst into the studio. The song they’d written on the fly was now the latest single by by Musiq Soulchild. TeachMe landed Bowland a Grammy nomination for Best R&B song of that year.

While Bowland says that the nomination “changed everything” for him, the process of creating the song was a throwback to a previous era. Over the course of his career, the music industry has sharply changed as a result of Napster and other technologies upending the traditional business model. Record companies have consolidated, leaving less money for session players to create on the fly. Meanwhile, a host of digital tools have made it possible for musicians to collaborate remotely in new ways.

The 80s and 90s were “funner times” to be a musician, says Bowland. “Your work day was more organic. You’re in the room with other musicians and you’re vibing off of them. It’s more than just being behind your instrument. You’re having conversations. You’re laughing. You’re joking. You’re eating together. It’s rewarding to watch and feel the process of the records being made.”

Nowadays, Bowland is often recording his part of a song remotely. But he does all sorts of other gigs too. Throughout the year, Bowland is a touring guitarist. He’s also part of a band that’s been booked for shows like the Oscars and the Soul Train Awards. One of his fondest memories as a performer came in 2016, performing at the White House for one of President Obama’s exit parties. He owns 59 guitars.

Like Preacher Boy in the film, Bowland has at times felt like he’s not playing alone, but as part of a continuum of musicians both dead and alive. Some of those luminaries he’s gotten the chance to play with himself, including Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross, and Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire. Others, like Caton, are just coming up.

But after a career as a “pro’s pro” and lots of behind-the-scenes work, Bowland is finally working on a solo album, which is full of love songs that tell the story of his relationship with his wife. No matter how far he goes with his gigs, Bowland always comes back to his hometown. “Philly is a soulful town, it’s a real town,” he says. “I’m a very simple person outside of the entertainment. So when I come home, I just feel like I can connect to Philadelphia a lot easier than many other places.”

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