One of the last links to the prewar African-American string band tradition, banjo player Odell Thompson was born on August 9, 1911, the son of John Arch Thompson, who was also a pretty fair banjo player. Thompson was raised in the northeastern part of Orange County in North Carolina, and when he began playing banjo, he absorbed his father's traditional repertoire, and was soon playing in string bands for square dances and frolics with his cousin, fiddler Joe Thompson. Odell took up guitar (he also played a little fiddle) and began playing the blues in the 1920s, but continued to play banjo in the old style in string bands with Joe until the 1940s, when pressure from bluegrass and other newer musical forms made their approach all but obsolete. In the early '70s, folklorist Kip Lornell discovered the duo and convinced them to start playing the old music again, which led to a new career of festivals and concerts for Thompson and his cousin. Odell played banjo in the old clawhammer style (a down-stroking technique that is known by several names, including frailing, thumping, and drop-thumb) on a fretless resonator banjo, and his sound had a wonderfully wild and archaic feel. Odell's banjo, coupled with Joe's ragged, swerving fiddle style, effectively re-created the feel of black string bands from the 1800s, and the duo's performances were literally living history lessons. Joe and Odell had just completed a set at Merlefest on April 28, 1994, when Odell Thompson was struck and killed by a car while crossing a road outside the festival grounds. He was 83. His passing broke the last link to the black string band tradition as a living, breathing art form. ~ Steve Leggett, Rovi
Billy Bland (born 5 April 1932, Wilmington, North Carolina) is an American R&B singer and songwriter.
Bland first sang professionally in the 1940s in New York, and sang with a group called The Four Bees in the 1950s on New Orleans's Imperial Records. He left the group for a solo career in 1955 and signed a recording contract with Old Town Records.
In 1960, Bland heard Titus Turner recording the song "Let the Little Girl Dance" in the studio, and demonstrated for Turner how to sing it (along with guitarist Mickey Baker and other session musicians). The event was recorded by record producer Henry Glover, and was eventually released as a single. The tune was a hit in the U.S., peaking at #11 on the Black Singles chart and #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Bland had two other minor hits that year, "Harmony" (U.S. Hot 100 #91) and "You Were Born to Be Loved" (U.S. Hot 100 #94). He recorded until 1963 for Old Town, and then quit the music industry.
In the 1980s, he ran a soul food restaurant in Harlem.
Harold Vick (April 3, 1936 – November 13, 1987) was an American hard bop and soul jazz saxophonist and flautist born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
Vick released several albums as leader during the 1960s and 70s, and worked with Grant Green, Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff and Shirley Scott, among others as sideman. Vick also played with Nat Adderley, Aretha Franklin, Dizzy Gillespie, Mercer Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Taylor, Donald Byrd, Horace Silver, Ray Charles & Gene Ammons.
He played in films such as Stardust Memories and Cotton Club, in which he played a musician. He also was in the Spike Lee film School Days. He featured on the soundtrack for She's Gotta Have It.
Etta Baker (March 31, 1913 – September 23, 2006) was an American Piedmont blues guitarist and singer from North Carolina, United States.
She was born Etta Lucille Reid in Caldwell County, North Carolina, of African American, Native American, and European American heritage. She played both the 6-string and 12-string forms of the acoustic guitar, as well as the five-string banjo. Baker played the Piedmont Blues for ninety years, starting at the age of three when she could not even hold the guitar properly. She was taught by her father, Boone Reid, who was also a longtime player of the Piedmont Blues on several instruments. Etta Baker was first recorded in the summer of 1956 when she and her father happened across folk singer Paul Clayton while visiting Cone Mansion in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, near their home in Morganton, NC. Baker's father asked Clayton to listen to his daughter playing her signature "One Dime Blues". Clayton was impressed and arrived at the Baker house with his tape recorder the next day, recording several songs.
Over the years, Baker has shared her knowledge with many well known musical artists including Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal (musician), and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. Baker received the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award from the North Carolina Arts Council in 1989, the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship in 1991, and the North Carolina Award in 2003. Along with her sister, Cora Phillips, Baker received the North Carolina Folklore Society's Brown-Hudson Folklore Award in 1982.
Baker had nine children, one of whom was killed in the Vietnam War in 1967, the same year her husband died. She last lived in Morganton, North Carolina, and died at the age of 93 in Fairfax, Virginia, while visiting a daughter who had suffered a stroke.
Blues guitarist Thomas Burt grew up hearing the reels, rags and spirituals that gave form to black musical expression in North Carolina's eastern Piedmont at the turn of the century. Born in 1900 near Raleigh to a family of sharecroppers, Mr. Burt gained his early knowledge of music informally within a family and community setting. His father played accordion for local dances, his mother sang hymns as she performed the daily chores, and friends dropped by often to pick the banjo or play tunes on the fiddle.
By his early teens, Mr. Burt had joined the music-making, first learning banjo and later mastering the guitar. It was on the guitar that he earned his reputation, playing at house parties, in tobacco warehouses, and at community gatherings from the 1920s through the '40s. He became a prominent figure in Durham's flourishing blues community, performing alongside local masters such as Sonny Terry and Blind Boy Fuller. His occupations included sawmilling, laying railroad track, farming, and working seasonal jobs in Durham's tobacco factories.
The blues faded in popularity within the black community in the 1950s and '60s but enjoyed a resurgence of support in the following decades, primarily by white audiences. During that time, Mr. Burt was frequently invited to give concerts and to perform at festivals. Often accompanied by his late wife Pauline, a fine singer of hymns and sacred songs, he appeared at the National Folk Festival, the National Downhome Blues Festival and the North Carolina Folklife Festival. In addition, his music was featured on two albums and three television documentaries. Mr. Burt received the North Carolina Folklore Society's Brown-Hudson Award in 1987.
Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues and gospel music. Watson won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Watson's flatpicking skills and knowledge of traditional American music are highly regarded. He performed with his son Merle for over 15 years until Merle's death in 1985 in an accident on the family farm
Watson was born in Deep Gap, North Carolina. According to Watson on his three-CD biographical recording Legacy, he got the nickname "Doc" during a live radio broadcast when the announcer remarked that his given name Arthel was odd and he needed an easy nickname. A fan in the crowd shouted "Call him Doc!" presumably in reference to the literary character Sherlock Holmes's sidekick Doctor Watson. The name stuck ever since.
An eye infection caused Doc Watson to lose his vision before his first birthday. Despite this, he was taught by his parents to work hard and care for himself. He attended North Carolina's school for the visually impaired, The Governor Morehead School, in Raleigh, North Carolina.
In a 1989 radio interview with Terry Gross on the Fresh Air show on National Public Radio, Watson explains how he got his first guitar. His father told him that if he and his brother David chopped down all the small dead chestnut trees along the edge of their field, he could sell the wood to a tannery. Watson bought a $10 Stella guitar from Sears Roebuck with his earnings, while his brother bought a new suit. Later in that same interview, Watson explained that his first high-quality guitar was a Martin D-18.
Watson's earliest influences were country roots musicians and groups such as the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. The first song he learned to play on the guitar was "When Roses Bloom in Dixieland", first recorded by the Carter Family in 1930. Watson stated in an interview with American Songwriter that, "Jimmie Rodgers was the first man that I started to claim as my favorite." Watson proved to be a natural musical talent and within months was performing on local street corners playing songs from the Delmore Brothers, Louvin Brothers, and Monroe Brothers alongside his brother Linny. By the time Watson reached adulthood, he had become a proficient acoustic and electric guitar player
In 1953, Watson joined the Johnson City, Tennessee-based Jack Williams' country and western swing band on electric guitar. The band seldom had a fiddle player, but was often asked to play at square dances. Following the example of country guitarists Grady Martin and Hank Garland, Watson taught himself to play fiddle tunes on his Les Paul electric guitar. He later transferred the technique to acoustic guitar, and playing fiddle tunes became part of his signature sound. During his time with Jack Williams, Doc also supported his family as a piano tuner.
In 1960, as the American folk music revival grew, Watson took the advice of folk musicologist Ralph Rinzler and began playing acoustic guitar and banjo exclusively. That move ignited Watson's career when he played on his first recording, Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley's. Also of pivotal importance for his career was his February 11, 1961 appearance at P.S. 41 in Greenwich Village. He subsequently began to tour as a solo performer and appeared at universities and clubs like the Ash Grove in Los Angeles. Watson would eventually get his big break and rave reviews for his performance at the renowned Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island in 1963. Watson recorded his first solo album in 1964 and began performing with his son Merle the same year.
After the folk revival waned during the late 1960s, Watson's career was sustained by his performance of "Tennessee Stud" on the 1972 live album recording Will the Circle Be Unbroken. As popular as ever, Doc and Merle began playing as a trio, with T. Michael Coleman on bass guitar, in 1974. The trio toured the globe during the late seventies and early eighties, recorded nearly fifteen albums between 1973 and 1985, and brought Doc and Merle’s unique blend of acoustic music to millions of new fans. In 1985, Merle died in a tractor accident.
Doc Watson sculpture on the corner of King and Depot Streets in Boone, North Carolina. The plaque on the bench reads "Just one of the People".
Watson played guitar in both flatpicking and fingerpicking style, but is best known for his flatpick work. His guitar playing skills, combined with his authenticity as a mountain musician, made him a highly influential figure during the folk music revival. Watson pioneered a fast and flashy bluegrass lead guitar style including fiddle tunes and crosspicking techniques which were adopted and extended by Clarence White, Tony Rice and many others. Watson was also an accomplished banjo player and sometimes accompanied himself on harmonica as well. Known also for his distinctive and rich baritone voice, Watson over the years developed a vast repertoire of mountain ballads, which he learned via the oral tradition of his home area in Deep Gap, North Carolina. His affable manner, humble nature and delightful wit endeared him to his fans nearly as much as his musical talent.
Watson played a Martin model D-18 guitar on his earliest recordings. In 1968, Watson began a relationship with Gallagher Guitars when he started playing their G-50 model. His first Gallagher, which Watson refers to as "Old Hoss", is on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1974, Gallagher created a customized G-50 line to meet Watson's preferred specifications, which bears the Doc Watson name. In 1991, Gallagher customized a personal cutaway guitar for Watson that he played until his death and which he referred to as "Donald" in honor of Gallagher guitar's second generation proprietor and builder, Don Gallagher. For the last few years, Doc had been playing a Dana Bourgeois dreadnought given to him by Ricky Skaggs for his 80th birthday.
Merle Watson, c. 1979
In 1986, Watson received the North Carolina Award and in 1994 he received a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award. Also in 1994, Watson teamed up with musicians Randy Scruggs and Earl Scruggs to contribute the classic song "Keep on the Sunny Side" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization.
In 2000, Watson was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor in Owensboro, Kentucky. In 1997, Watson received the National Medal of Arts from U.S. president Bill Clinton.In 2010, he was awarded an honorary doctor of music degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
In his later life, Watson scaled back his touring schedule. Watson was generally joined onstage by his grandson (Merle's son) Richard, as well as longtime musical partners David Holt or Jack Lawrence. On one occasion, Watson was accompanied by Australian guitar player Tommy Emmanuel at a concert at the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas. Watson also performed, accompanied by Holt and Richard, at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco, California in 2009, as he had done in several previous years.
Watson hosted the annual MerleFest music festival held every April at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. The festival features a vast array of acoustic style music focusing on the folk, bluegrass, blues and old-time music genres. It was named in honor of Merle Watson and is one of the most popular acoustic music festivals in the world, drawing over 70,000 music fans each year.
Watson was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2010
In 1947, Doc married Rosa Lee Carlton, the daughter of popular fiddle player Gaither Carlton. Watson and Rosa Lee had two children — Eddy Merle (named after country music legends Eddy Arnold and Merle Travis) in 1949 and Nancy Ellen in 1951.
In late May 2012, Watson was listed in critical condition but was responsive at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after undergoing colon surgery. Watson fell at his home earlier in the week, after which he was sent to Watauga Medical Center in nearby Boone, NC. Watson was not seriously injured in the fall, but an underlying medical condition prompted the surgery which required him to be airlifted to Winston-Salem. Watson died on May 29, 2012 at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center at the age of 89
The big band of Ike Carpenter was heavily influenced by the sound and style of Duke Ellington, even recording a cover version of that band's signature tune, "Take the 'A' Train," as well as other material heavily associated with the Duke, such as his son Mercer Ellington's nostalgic composition entitled "Things Ain't What They Used to Be." But the most famous record created by Carpenter and company during a decade of recording activity beginning in 1945 was "Pachuco Hop," a tribute to Mexican hipsters or hoodlums, depending on sociological perspective. Often treated to the Japanese-sounding spelling of "Pachuko Hop," this 1953 single originally released on the Alladin label features ear-withering trumpet soloing from a young Maynard Ferguson. Despite the assertion of some critics that the performances of Carpenter's bands lacked jazz content, excellent soloists were often showcased. The aforementioned version of "Take the 'A' Train," for example, highlights a fine tenor sax solo by Lucky Thompson.
Carpenter grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and was apparently performing on piano in college bands during the mid- '30s when he would have only been about 13-years-old. Following his college graduation he performed with several bandleaders including Johnny Davis. From 1944, Carpenter worked as a pianist in bandleader Boyd Raeburn's first influential jazz outfit. This relationship lasted a bit more than a year, after which Carpenter started up the first of his own bands, basing himself on the east coast. He led an octet for the most part during this period, relocating to Hollywood in 1947. Carpenter crafted nearly two dozen different sides between then and the mid '50s. His large group was finally reduced to unwanted lumber in 1956; the pianist literally chilled out by going to work as accompanist for skaters in the Ice Capades for the next few years.
Carpenter led some small groups in the late '50s, then basically seems to have shuttered his musical workshop. Record collectors from various camps of stylistic interest have in a small way kept the contents from going completely rusty. The band's output may have become too orientated toward pop music in the later years for serious jazz fans, yet these types of tracks have wound up appealing to a new breed of lounge and space age jazz fan. The Mothers of Invention, the first band to feature guitarist and composer Frank Zappa, would sometimes perform a cover version of "Pachuco Hop" in the '60s, particularly in the early Greenwich Village days when jazz heavies such as Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Archie Shepp would sit in. Carpenter's band is featured in two musical variety films from the '50s, Rhythm and Rhyme and Holiday Rhythm.
Moses Rascoe got his first guitar in North Carolina at the age of 13 and turned professional in Pennsylvania some 50-odd years later. In between, he traveled the roads as a day laborer and truck driver, playing guitar only for "a dollar or a drink," as he told Jack Roberts in Living Blues. But he'd picked up plenty of songs over the years, from old Brownie McGhee Piedmont blues to Jimmy Reed's '50s jukebox hits, and when he retired from trucking at the age of 65, he gave his music a shot. The local folk-music community took notice, as did blues and folk festivals from Chicago to Europe. Rascoe recorded his first album live at Godfrey Daniels, a Pennsylvania coffeehouse, in 1987.
Francis Hillman "Scrapper" Blackwell (February 21, 1903 – October 7, 1962) was an American blues guitarist and singer; best known as half of the guitar-piano duo he formed with Leroy Carr in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he was an acoustic single-note picker in the Chicago blues and Piedmont blues style, with some critics noting that he veered towards jazz.
Blackwell was born in Syracuse, North Carolina, United States as one of sixteen children of Payton and Elizabeth Blackwell. Part Cherokee, he grew up and spent most of his life in Indianapolis, Indiana. Blackwell was given the nickname, "Scrapper", by his grandmother, due to his fiery nature. His father played the fiddle, but Blackwell was a self-taught guitarist, building his first guitar out of cigar boxes, wood and wire. He also learned the piano, occasionally playing professionally. By his teens, Blackwell was a part-time musician, traveling as far as Chicago. Known for being withdrawn and hard to work with, Blackwell established a rapport with pianist Leroy Carr, whom he met in Indianapolis in the mid-1920s, creating a productive working relationship. Carr convinced Blackwell to record with him for the Vocalion label in 1928; the result was "How Long, How Long Blues", the biggest blues hit of that year.
Blackwell also made solo recordings for Vocalion, including "Kokomo Blues" which was transformed into "Old Kokomo Blues" by Kokomo Arnold before being redone as "Sweet Home Chicago" by Robert Johnson. Blackwell and Carr toured throughout the American Midwest and South between 1928 and 1935 as stars of the blues scene, recording over 100 sides. Well received numbers were "Prison Bound Blues" (1928), reportedly based on Carr's own stretch of time for bootlegging, "Mean Mistreater Mama" (1934) and "Blues Before Sunrise" (1934). The duo moved to St. Louis, Missouri in the early 1930s, but were back in Indianopolis when Carr died.
Blackwell made several solo excursions; a 1931 visit to Richmond, Indiana to record at Gennett studios is notable. Blackwell, dissatisfied with the lack of credit given his contributions with Carr, was remedied by Vocalion's Mayo Williams after his 1931 breakaway. In all future recordings, Blackwell received equal credit with Carr in terms of recording contracts and songwriting credits. Blackwell's last recording session with Carr was in February 1935 for the Bluebird label. The recording session ended bitterly, as both musicians left the studio mid-session and on bad terms, stemming from payment disputes. Two months later Blackwell received a phone call informing him of Carr's death due to heavy drinking and nephritis. Blackwell soon recorded a tribute to his musical partner of seven years ("My Old Pal Blues") before retiring from the music industry.
Blackwell returned to music in the late 1950s and was first recorded in June 1958 by Colin C. Pomroy (those recordings were released as late as 1967 on the Collector label). Soon afterwards he was recorded by Duncan P. Schiedt for Doug Dobell's 77 Records.
Scrapper Blackwell was then recorded in 1961, in Indianapolis, by a young Art Rosenbaum for the Prestige/Bluesville Records label. The story is recounted by Rosenbaum as starting three years before the recordings were made. While still growing up in his hometown of Indianapolis, an African American woman that Rosenbaum knew said he "had to meet a man that she knew, who played guitar, played blues and christian songs, they'll make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck." Rosenbaum goes into more details of meeting Blackwell; "I met the gentleman across the street from the Methodist hospital in Indianapolis". Scrapper's friend said, "well he hasn't got a guitar", so Art said "well I got a guitar." Scrapper than said that he needed some 'bird food', with Rosenbaum being confused as to what he was referring to, Scrapper continued, "you gotta get some bird food for the bird, before the bird sings... beer!" Rosenbaum said, "I'm too young!" Scrapper and his friend continued, "we'll buy the beer, you just give us some money." Art concludes the meeting, "So we did, and he started playing these beautiful blues. I didn't realize he was Scrapper Blackwell til I mentioned his name to a blues collecting friend." To which then the friend exclaimed, "you met Scrapper Blackwell!?"
He was ready to resume his blues career when he was shot and killed during a mugging in an Indianapolis alley. He was 59 years old. Although the crime remains unsolved, police arrested his neighbor at the time for the murder. Blackwell is buried in New Crown Cemetery, Indianapolis.
Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen) (July 10, 1907 – February 13, 1941) was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.
Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina, United States, to Calvin Allen and Mary Jane Walker. He was one of a family of 10 children, but after his mother's death he moved with his father to Rockingham. As a boy he learned to play the guitar and also learned from older singers the field hollers, country rags, and traditional songs and blues popular in poor, rural areas.
He married Cora Allen young and worked as a labourer, but began to lose his eyesight in his mid-teens. According to researcher Bruce Bastin, "While he was living in Rockingham he began to have trouble with his eyes. He went to see a doctor in Charlotte who allegedly told him that he had ulcers behind his eyes, the original damage having been caused by some form of snow-blindness." However, there is an alternative story that he was blinded by an ex-girlfriend who threw chemicals in his face.
By 1928 he was completely blind, and turned to whatever employment he could find as a singer and entertainer, often playing in the streets. By studying the records of country blues players like Blind Blake and the "live" playing of Gary Davis, Allen became a formidable guitarist, and played on street corners and at house parties in Winston-Salem, NC, Danville, VA, and then Durham, North Carolina. In Durham, playing around the tobacco warehouses, he developed a local following which included guitarists Floyd Council and Richard Trice, as well as harmonica player Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry, and washboard player/guitarist George Washington.
Bull City Blues, Durham, North Carolina
In 1935, Burlington record store manager and talent scout James Baxter Long secured him a recording session with the American Recording Company (ARC). Allen, Davis and Washington recorded several tracks in New York City, including the traditional "Rag, Mama, Rag". To promote the material, Long decided to rename Allen as "Blind Boy Fuller", and also named Washington Bull City Red.
Over the next five years Fuller made over 120 sides, and his recordings appeared on several labels. His style of singing was rough and direct, and his lyrics explicit and uninhibited as he drew from every aspect of his experience as an underprivileged, blind Black person on the streets—pawnshops, jailhouses, sickness, death—with an honesty that lacked sentimentality. Although he was not sophisticated, his artistry as a folk singer lay in the honesty and integrity of his self-expression. His songs contained desire, love, jealousy, disappointment, menace and humor.
In April 1936, Fuller recorded ten solo performances, and also recorded with guitarist Floyd Council. The following year, after auditioning for J. Mayo Williams, he recorded for the Decca label, but then reverted to ARC. Later in 1937, he made his first recordings with Sonny Terry. In 1938 Fuller, who was described as having a fiery temper,[citation needed] was imprisoned for shooting a pistol at his wife, wounding her in the leg, causing him to miss out on John Hammond's "From Spirituals to Swing" concert in NYC that year. While Fuller was eventually released, it was Sonny Terry who went in his stead, the beginning of a long "folk music" career. Fuller's last two recording sessions took place in New York City during 1940.
Fuller's repertoire included a number of popular double entendre "hokum" songs such as "I Want Some Of Your Pie", "Truckin' My Blues Away" (the origin of the phrase "keep on truckin'"), and "Get Your Yas Yas Out" (adapted as "Get Your Ya-Yas Out" for the origin of a later Rolling Stones album title), together with the autobiographical "Big House Bound" dedicated to his time spent in jail. Though much of his material was culled from traditional folk and blues numbers, he possessed a formidable finger-picking guitar style. He played a steel National resonator guitar. He was criticised by some as a derivative musician, but his ability to fuse together elements of other traditional and contemporary songs and reformulate them into his own performances, attracted a broad audience.[citation needed] He was an expressive vocalist and a masterful guitar player, best remembered for his uptempo ragtime hits including "Step It Up and Go". At the same time he was capable of deeper material, and his versions of "Lost Lover Blues", "Rattlesnakin' Daddy" and "Mamie" are as deep as most Delta blues. Because of his popularity, he may have been overexposed on records, yet most of his songs remained close to tradition and much of his repertoire and style is kept alive by other Piedmont artists to this day.
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