“N.C.’s musicians take songs from Juke Joints to Carnegie”

“N.C.’s musicians take songs from Juke Joints to Carnegie” 

The Associated Press – Nov 9, 1986

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In the 1930s and 1940s, they picked and wailed in tobacco warehouses and juke joints for fellow farmers and workers or they buck-danced on their back porches for family and friends.

Now many of North Carolina's blues musicians have an international following and perform in places from Carnegie Hall to Southeast Asia. Others, however, continue to work the blue-col-lar jobs they've had for years.

"North Carolina has been intensively investigated for blues," said Glenn Hinson, a Creedmore resident who is re-searching a book on North Carolina blues musicians. "As a result, public awareness of the blues is high enough so many musicians here are able to do gigs regularly. Many of them now rep-resent not only their state, but also their region nationally and internationally as they tour and perform."

Hinson said the Piedmont blues differs from the more publicized Delta blues in its complex, delicate guitar picking style. It was influenced by rag-time and white country styles, while the Delta blues sounds rougher and sparser.

Delta blues moved up the Mississippi to Chicago and the West Coast. Its most famous practitioners included B.B. King and John Lee Hooker.

Piedmont blues moved to New York with musicians like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

Terry, a blind musician who came from the Durham blues tradition in the 1930s, died last March. His partner, McGhee, now lives in California.

But many other blues musicians in black communities around North Carolina continue to perform, and some sell records worldwide.

Among them is Thomas Burt, who lives near Creedmore. Born in 1900, Burt has "watched the entire development of the music, the transition from set dances to city house parties, said Hinson.

Burt played guitar for round dances and buck-dancing, a rhythmic solo dance that was the precursor of tap dancing. As the blues developed, he played for farmers who brought their crops into eastern North Carolina tobacco markets.

In the late 1940s when rhythm and blues became more popular, Burt con-tinued to play for family and friends. But an appearance at a 1978 folk festival in Durham helped revive his popularity. He went on to perform at the National Folklife Festival at Wolf Trap in 1980 and the National Down Home Blues Festival in Atlanta in 1984.

Many women played the blues in North Carolina, but not many became well known outside their own neighbor-hoods. Hinson said an exception is Etta Baker, 73, of Morganton.

"Etta is probably one of the finest guitar players in the Piedmont style," he said. "She has an incredibly light and delicate touch, fingering very complex runs on an acoustic or electric guitar."

Baker was one of the first Piedmont blues musicians recorded during the folk revival of the 1950s. Since then, she has appeared regularly at folk festivals and has been included on other albums.

Another accomplished female blues musician with North Carolina training is Elizabeth Cotten, 94, who now lives in Syracuse, N.Y. Famous for the song Freight Train, she won a Grammy award last year for best traditional album.

Algia Mae Hinton was one blueswoman who didn't, mind playing for the rollicking house parties that produced many musicians. Hinson said Hinton, 57, still performs in her native Johnston County.

"She's also one of the area's better buck-dancers," he said. "She's still able to perform with all the facility of a teenager."

Hinton dances while she plays, sometimes playing the guitar behind her head when inspired. She was re-corded for a statewide blues album in 1978, has played at national folk festivals and last year performed at Carnegie Hall in New York. She also plays with the Black Folk Heritage Tour of the North Carolina Arts Council.

Another performer on the statewide tour is John Dee Holeman, 57, who has combined the Durham guitar blues tradition with the best of Chicago blues. "He's also a buck-dancer who literally can tell stories with his feet," said Hinson.

"His voice is powerful. It can vary from very lighthearted vocals, almost joking, to a deep, brooding meanness."

Hinson said recordings and writings by folklorists "led to a revival, not a discovery, but a bringing of these artists to a new public, to a community that ex-tended beyond their hometown."

It wouldn't have died out, it would have survived in its own way," he said. "But the music has enabled people like Algia Mae to stop doing farmwork and rely more on their artistry. That's a real change, and that's allowed the music to grow and develop in new ways."

"Singer Z.Z. Hill dies in Dallas"

"Singer Z.Z. Hill dies in Dallas" 

Clarion Ledger, Apr 28, 1984.

Blues singer Arzell “Z.Z.” Hill, who recorded at Jackson's Malaco Records, died in Dallas, Texas, Friday morning of an apparent heart attack.

Hill, 48, known as "the Blues Man," made music industry history last year when his Malaco album, "Down Home Blues," became the best-selling blues album of the past decade. It remained on Billboard magazine's black album charts for more than 85 weeks.

Hill was pronounced dead at Charlton Methodist Hospital at 11:50 a.m. Friday. Doctors worked for nearly an hour to revive Hill, but there was no response, according to Gerald "Wolf" Stephenson, a Miami producer.

Stephenson said a friend of Hill's found the singer lying on the driveway of Hill's Dallas home. 

Hill was preparing for a weekend of singing engagements, Stevenson said.

Hill, who was born in Naples, Texas, had recorded in Jackson the past four years and recently renewed his con-tract with Malaco for another four-year stint. His Malaco album catalogue includes "Down Home Blues," "The Rhythm and the Blues" and his latest release, "I'm a Blues Man," currently No. 29 on the black album charts.

His funeral was held at First Baptist Church in Hughes Springs, Texas on May 3, 1984.  His remains were laid to rest to Gethsemane Cemetery, Naples, Cass County, Texas.

Tutwiler Mural and Map of SBW II's Grave

Juan Urbano Lopez (c.2007)

Cristen Craven Barnard is the artist responsible for the mural in downtown Tutwiler, where she lived at the time of its painting in the early 1996. She painted the map to the grave of Sonny Boy Williamson II. 

The Clarksdale Press Register, Aug 3, 1995.

The Clarksdale Press Register, Feb 3, 1996.

The Clarksdale Press Register, March 3, 1996.

The Clarksdale Press Register, May 29, 1996.

The Clarksdale Press Register, May 10, 1997.

Cristen Barnard began as an artist at age 4, and has grown to be a major illustrator of blues festival posters since her first in 1997 for the King Biscuit Festival. Since then, she has supplied the posters for six more King Biscuit Festivals. She has also supplied the art for the Notodden Blues Festival (four times), the Highway 61 Blues Festival (ten), Clarksdale’s Juke Joint Festival (seven), the Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival (four), Haney’s Big House Ferriday Music Festival (three), the Mississippi Development Authority’s Road Trip tours (three), the Natchez Art and Soul Festival, Charleston’s Gateway to the Delta Festival, and the Pinetop Perkins Homecoming. In addition, Barnard designed the famous Railroad Park murals of W.C. Handy and Sonny Boy Williamson in downtown Tutwiler, as well as murals in Helena, Leland, Batesville, and Ruleville, and a huge hanging mural for Notodden’s 25th anniversary. She is perhaps best known for her painting of the legendary “Deal at the Crossroads.”

The Headstone of Sonny Boy Williamson II: The Foundation of Blues Tourism Sits in Tutwiler

The Headstone of Sonny Boy Williamson II:

The Foundation of Blues Tourism Sits in Tutwiler 

By T. DeWayne Moore

Director of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund

The back of Williamson's Grave

In the early 1900s, the only way across the Mississippi at Helena. Arkansas was a ferry run by Harold Jenkins, father of country singer Conway Twitty. The ferry closed at midnight "which was good in my favor," recalled Mrs. Z.L. "Momma" Hill (who ran the hotel until her death in 1997), when they were playing juke joints in Clarksdale or nearby towns.

"When they had to stay over, they stayed with me," she recalled. The musicians kept a piano on the premises, and the place rang with music.

Mrs. Hill was a good friend of Sonny Boy Williamson, a flamboyant harmonica player and singer who was featured on the popular live radio show King Biscuit Time on station KFFA in Helena. The show's sponsor, Interstate Grocery Co., manufactured Sonny Boy Corn Meal, featuring a drawing of Williamson playing his harmonica while sitting barefoot on an ear of corn.

During the 1960s, Williamson became popular with the rock generation. He played extensively in Europe and considered moving there. But, sensing that he was dying, he returned home a few months before his death in 1965.  Mrs. Hill recalls that Williamson stopped by one Sunday afternoon and found that she was taking a nap. "Wake her up," he demanded. "I want to play some music."

"He played in front of my window, on my porch," she recalls. "Oh he had a crowd that Sunday. It didn't take him long to draw a crowd. He went on, and a few days later he was dead."

Williamson's body was found in the second-floor apartment he kept over a business in downtown Helena. According to King Biscuit Time announcer Sonny Payne, the downstairs business in those days was the Dreamland Cafe. If that sounds like a touch worthy of Tennessee Williams, you'll be interested to know that the late playwright once lived in Clarksdale.

Whitfield Chapel (razed in the late 1990s)
© Juan Urbano Lopez

Williamson's grave is near Tutwiler, which is on U.S. 49, about 15 miles southeast of Clarksdale. No signs point the way, but it's not hard to find someone to direct you down a country road to the churchyard. Unlike in the 1980s, you can find the musician's grave.