The contributions of Black North Carolinians to the music realm spans all genres and could truly be one of those multi-disc collectible box sets that you buy on late-night television (do they still have those?). In fact, during the early 2000’s the NC Arts Council researched and developed the African American Music Trails of Eastern NC, to celebrate the rich musical heritage of African American musicians in North Carolina.
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During the 1940s and the 1950s when jazz music was as hot as hip-hop is today, Wilmington, North Carolina, was the place where jazz giants like Cab Calloway, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, and Louis Armstrong performed at a local jazz club and ballroom called The Barn. It was located on South 11th Street, between Meares and Wright Streets, and was owned and operated by the late Mr. and Mrs. Charles Whitted.
Durham isn’t the city the blues forgot so much as a city that forgot its own blues history. For far too many years, Durham’s blues legacy was less than an afterthought – and it’s a legacy as rich as any city beyond Memphis or Chicago.
“To be born a Lumbee Indian is to be born a singer,” says Malinda Maynor Lowery in the opening scene of her 1997 documentary "Sounds of Faith." “We’ve been singing gospel music for 300 years.”
Born in Robeson County and raised in Durham, Lowery is a scholar, filmmaker, and member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Through archival images, powerful field recordings, and narration that explores the importance of music in her own family, Lowery uses music as a mechanism for revealing the strength, resiliency, and creativity of the Lumbee tribe.
Daniel Coston knows a thing or two about North Carolina music. The photographer and writer has documented our state's music community since 1995.
While Mount Airy is best known as the hometown of American actor Andy Griffith (and the prototype for the fictional town, Mayberry), it has always had an underground. Founded in 1948, hometown station WPAQ served as a sanctuary and tributary for the early bluegrass pickers that emerged from the surrounding hills and hollers. By the mid-1960’s, Mount Airy had a handful of record labels to circulate the sounds of regional artists. One such label, Tornado Records, holds the distinction of issuing “Thoughts of a Madman” by the Nomads, which became canon in the genre of garage rock.
Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II aka Donald Byrd is probably most remembered as a Detroit City born Hard Bop maestro. In the mid-1970s Byrd began to collaborate with the Mizell Brothers -- Larry and Fonce -- to chart a new direction for Jazz and Funk music that would reverberate a generation later in the music of Hip-Hop Acts like GURU of Gangstarr and Main Source.
On February 28th, 1964, Thelonious Monk graced the cover of Time Magazine. The essay within, “The Loneliest Monk” by Barry Farrell, reinforces the imagery of the cover – painting monk as a mysteriously dark, but brilliant innovator.
To read the article published 55 years ago today.
Willie French Lowery was born in 1944 in Robeson County, N.C. During his career, he published over 500 songs and his groups “Plant and See” and “Lumbee” toured with the likes of the Allman Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, and Canned Heat. Beyond his musical prowess, Lowery was a pillar of North Carolina’s Lumbee community, serving as an activist, educator, and tradition-bearer of his tribe’s heritage.
Sister Lena Mae Perry says music is like medicine. She would know. At 80-years-old, Sister Perry has helmed the Branchettes, a celebrated gospel group from Johnston County, North Carolina, for decades. To see her perform is to witness the healing powers of music, and, at risk of cliché, to be taken to church.
Born in Johnston County in 1940, she grew up in a farming family that deeply valued education, faith, and music.