Western swing singer and guitarist Sean Blackburn, 56, who died in Golden on Sept. 29 of a heart attack, was a regular guest during the early years of “A Prairie Home Companion” and, along with longtime partner Liz Masterson, a fixture on the cowboy music circuit.
Sean Francis Blackburn was born Dec. 13, 1948, the second of nine children. After attending St. John’s College and the Minneapolis School of Design, he left Minnesota, hitchhiking until he found himself in the Bahamas.
On returning to Minneapolis, Blackburn and guitarist Dakota Dave Hull formed a duo that lasted 10 years. They specialized in vintage Western swing, a musical genre enjoying a revival.
“Sure, Merle Haggard, Asleep at the Wheel and Willie Nelson were the big guns who helped rescue Western swing from the grave, but Sean and Dave were, in my life, even more profound,” longtime friend and fellow musician Jay Peterson wrote in an online tribute at www.mudcat.org.
“They brought it directly into the listening rooms, the colleges and the coffeehouses and folk festivals, where the music grew new legs and danced again, after decades of purgatory.”
Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Blackburn and Hull became a perennial feature on “A Prairie Home Companion,” the phenomenally popular old-time radio show hosted by Garrison Keillor, and at folk festivals, concert halls and colleges. (Keillor sang a version of Tom Paxton’s “Ramblin’ Boy” in tribute to Blackburn on his Oct. 1 show.)
Following a brief career as a solo musician and comedy club performer, Blackburn moved to Denver. In 1988, he teamed with Masterson, who played the wide-eyed extrovert cowgirl to Blackburn’s laconic cowboy.
Like Blackburn, she gravitated toward vintage Western swing that propelled her career when she led the Cactus Crooners.
The two became partners on and off stage. Their affection for one another remained a palpable part of their performances from cowboy poetry festivals to national presentations at the Kennedy Center and Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Lincoln Center in New York City.
“Sean and Liz had some fabulous chemistry,” Peterson observed.
“The combination of Sean’s formidable stagecraft and doctorate-level command of the music, and Liz’s pure-as-a-mountain-stream voice were something to behold.”
Blackburn’s luxuriant black handlebar mustache illustrated his signature tune, “You Gotta Have a Moustache.” His lean legs, looking impossibly long in the dark jeans he favored on stage, and his white Stetson and cowboy boots made him seem even taller.
He possessed a natural knack for dry comedy that was as self-referential as it was self-effacing. Blackburn enjoyed reeling off the names of his eight siblings – a tongue-tyingly sibilant feat because every sibling’s name began with the letter S – as the introduction to the 1930s swing standard “I Found a New Baby,” a song he always dedicated to his mother.
He wrote and sang dozens of his own songs.
A favorite tune, Eddie Cherkose’s “Born to the Saddle,” displayed Blackburn’s elegant, schooled guitar playing to advantage. Blackburn’s peers admired Blackburn’s singular fingerwork and stage presence.
“An excellent guitarist, and great charisma,” said Ranger Doug Green of the popular band Riders in the Sky.
Blackburn used a rope as part of the act, extending the humor in his deft tricks. Audiences roared during his transitional routine from rope tricks to singing. Picking up his guitar, Blackburn grew increasingly desperate in the silent struggle to work the strap over his 10-gallon hat.
Flummoxed after vain attempts to shift his hat’s position, Blackburn finally laid the guitar on the stage and stepped between the strap and the instrument, wiggling the guitar strap up over his hips like a woman stepping into a tight skirt.
Blackburn’s romance with Masterson ended about four years ago. They remained close, continuing to perform and accompanying each other on excursions to Golden’s North Table Mountain. Blackburn rode his zebra dun mustang, Hermanito, as Masterson hiked with her dog.
During his free time, away from the stage and from his new job as a Web page designer for the University of Colorado’s behavioral psychology department, Blackburn inevitably was near his horse. After leaving Masterson, he moved into a home chosen for its proximity to the stable where Hermanito was boarded.
Survivors include his mother, Georgya Blackburn of Naples, Fla.; sisters Susan Collins of Oak Park, Ill., Sarah Blackburn-Renn of St. Cloud, Minn., and Sandra Blackburn of Ojai, Calif.; brothers Steven Blackburn of Royalton, Minn., Samuel Blackburn of Big Lake, Minn., Scott Blackburn of Andover, Minn., Seth Blackburn of Templeton, Calif., and Stanford Blackburn of Blaine, Minn.
A tribute concert will be held at 8 p.m. Oct. 15 at Washington Park Methodist Church, 1955 E. Arizona Ave.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
