Abe Reid

Abe Reid is a master of growling out old tunes and screaming harmonica, and now his authentic finger picking style has lots of new guitar squeaks and squonks to unleash on the unsuspecting. Abe’s style inspires countless imitations and makes getting the blues enjoyable. He’s an innovator, creating infectious melodies that deliver some of the most potent assaults on the English Language since Allen Ginsberg howled his ass off.

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Adolphus Bell
Adolphus Bell was born in the country outside of Birmingham, Alabama. "I grew up on the farm, working in the cotton fields; music was something that was just always around me. When I was a bit older we moved to Pittsburgh. It was there that I began playing guitar in 1963 or 64.

I grew up with George Benson he was the one that put the guitar in my hand. I then moved to Flint, MI. From Flint I moved to Gadsden, Al, then back to Birmingham. I have been around.

When I was in Atlanta an English man saw me playing in the Underground took me to England to play a special show for his wife. I only played one night and stayed for about a week and a half. That was my first and only time I have been out of the country. I loved it. I didn't know how much people appreciated my music until I went to England. It was also my first flight. I am about to go to Costa Rica, France and Australia with Music Maker."

"I promote, my one-man band, blues hits from the 50s and 60s. I had a band. My band stayed with me for 6 years. They wouldn't be in time for gigs or practice; I loaned them money, they still didn't show up on time. I told my mom, she said, 'Son, don't you put up with this. You keep playing that guitar if you have to play by yourself.' So that is what I did, I began by going in my room. I had rhythm in both my feet and the guitar in my hands. I went to the pawn show, and brought back in the room my drums, and I began to start playing. And you know, it sounded good to me the first time I started playing. I stayed in there about 6 hours, nine months straight. I would play everyday. Finally, I left the room and I went to the club, it was about 1975, and my sidemen said they were tired and wanted a break. They said they didn't want to play the show. I said to them they didn't have to play. I told them I wanted to play by myself. I have been doing this for about 40 years."

"I found out about Music Maker from Tim Duffy. He tells me he saw me driving my van while he was driving back from Kentucky. Then his friend Mudcat saw me in the Underground in Atlanta. Beverly "Guitar" Watkins and I played together in the Underground. She played right down the way from me. I used to have a security guard to bodyguard me playing at the Underground. People really like my show. Then I left there and they could not find me. Then Mudcat somehow found my telephone number and Tim gave me a call and booked me at the King Biscuit Festival, and I played and started working with Music Maker then. I have been working with them ever since then."

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Alabama Slim
Alabama Slim was born Milton Frazier in Vance, Alabama on March 29, 1939. His father worked building trains at the Pullman plant and his mother did domestic work. In their home, they had a Victrola and a boxful of 78s and Slim fell in love with the blues of Bill Broonzy and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

We met Alabama Slim in New Orleans while visiting bluesman Little Freddie King. Slim is a towering man, close to seven feet tall. He was very well spoken and dressed in an impeccable tailored suit. He told me he was an old friend of Freddie’s and was originally from Huntsville, Alabama. I told him if he ever got back there soon, that he should call me and I will get him into a great recording studio up there. I asked him how he got into music.

“I grew up listening to the old blues since I was a child. I spent summers with my grandparents who had a farm. Them old folks would get to moanin' while they worked, and I just started moanin' with them. That's where I learned to sing. When I got grown I formed a band and we played little juke joints in the 50s and 60s. In 65, I came to New Orleans after hurricane Betsy. Got me a job with a moving company and then one making cooking oil. My cousin Freddie King was drinking hard in those days, and I was too. We jammed every once in awhile. By the time the 80s rolled around I was not doing much but Freddie always checked on me. By the 90s I got myself together and we have been best of friends ever since, tighter than brothers really, there is not a day that goes by when we do not speak or see each other.”

After Katrina, Slim and Freddie settled in Dallas in an apartment complex and spent most of their days working up old and new songs. This past Thanksgiving they visited with family in Huntsville, Alabama. There they went into the studio with producer Ardie Dean. Upon hearing the session I was greatly surprised. Slim had a voice that was cross between John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins and himself, while Freddie's guitar work danced and followed Slim wherever he went.

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Albert White
Albert White was born in 1942 in Atlanta, Georgia. He grew up with music as his uncle was the famous Piano Red. As a child his uncle would rehearse his group out on the porch of his home.

Albert was fascinated by the music and fell in love with the guitar. Red gave him a little old guitar and encouraged Albert to take lessons from Wesley Jackson who was in his band. Albert began taking lesson every Saturday morning.

As he got better he just played more and more. In high school he had his own group and went out on the college circuit playing gigs. In 65 Piano Red recruited Albert to play in his group where he stayed for seven years.

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Algia Mae Hinton
Algia Mae Hinton was born on August 29, 1929 in Johnston County, North Carolina. Her parents, Alexander and Ollie O'Neal, were farmers who raised tobacco, cotton, cucumbers and sweet potatoes. Mother Ollie could play many stringed instruments and began teaching Algia when she was just nine years old. She was the youngest of fourteen children and worked the fields from an early age. Her musical and agricultural upbringing set the stage for her adult life. Algia married Millard Hinton in 1950. Her husband died in 1965, forcing Algia to raise her seven children alone by working long hours on the farm. Despite these trying circumstances, Algia kept the music alive and passed it on to her children. Together, they fought off the hard times by entertaining the people of their community. Over the years Algia's music has gained international recognition. -Lightnin' Wells If you kill a chicken save me the head. When you thinking I'm working, I'm walking down the street.

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Benton Flippen


Benton was born in 1920, the seventh of eight children. Benton recounts that he started playing the banjo in his early teens, and picked up the fiddle when he was about eighteen. He also played guitar from time to time, and his wife Lois recalls that he even sang the occasional song when they were courting.

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Beverly Guitar Watkins

Beverly “Guitar” Watkins was born in 1939 in Atlanta, Georgia. When Watkins was approximately 12, her family moved to Commerce, GA. She began playing music as a schoolchild, and then in high school played bass for a band called Billy West Stone and the Down Beats. In approximately 1959, her junior year of high school, she was introduced to Piano Red, who had a daily radio show on WAOK, and she subsequently joined Piano Red and the Meter-tones, who played in a number of towns in the Atlanta area, and then Atlanta clubs such as the Magnolia Ballroom and the Casino, before starting to tour throughout the southeast, primarily at colleges. About the time the group renamed itself Piano Red and the Houserockers, they started touring nationally.

The group had two successful singles: Dr. Feelgood and Right String But The Wrong Yo-Yo. After recording Dr. Feelgood the group was known variously as “Piano Red & The Interns,” “Dr. Feelgood & The Interns,” and “Dr. Feelgood, The Interns, and The Nurse.” The group also included Roy Lee Johnson (composer of "Mr. Moonlight", later recorded by The Beatles).

After the breakup of the band in approximately 1965, Watkins played with Eddie Tigner and the Ink Spots, Joseph Smith and the Fendales, and then with Leroy Redding and the Houserockers until the late 1980s. Subsequently she has been based in Atlanta, a well-known fixture at the highly popular Underground Atlanta.

Watkins, who not only had a long and continuous musical career, but worked with artists like James Brown, B.B. King and Ray Charles, was well-known for years within the blues community. However, like many roots musicians both black and white, she found it difficult to crack the airwaves and achieved renown late in her career, after the advent of the Internet made it possible for musicians not backed by major labels to be heard by a wider audience. She was re-discovered by Music Maker Relief Foundation founder Tim Duffy, who started booking her in package shows, and in 1998, with Koko Taylor and Rory Block, was part of the all-star Women of the Blues “Hot Mamas” tour.

Watkins was playing internationally (e.g., the Main Stage at the Ottawa Blues Fest in 2004) as well as in her hometown Atlanta.  She has become a permanent fixture in the Atlanta Underground.

Back In Business her solo debut album, was released in 2001 as part of the Music Maker Series distributed by Sire Records Group/ Warner Bros. The album showcases Watkins' flexibility and prowess in a wide range of styles: roadhouse blues, jazz-inflected blues and rockabilly-blues. It also earned Beverly a W.C. Handy Award nomination. Other CD Titles include: The Feelings of Beverly “Guitar” Watkins, released in 2004.

Now in her 70's, Watkins continues to perform in Atlanta-area blues clubs and at major festivals around the U.S.. She put in a particularly compelling, energetic performance at the 2008 Cognac Blues Festival.

Watkins describes her style as “real Lightnin' Hopkins lowdown blues... I would call that hard classic blues, hard stompin' blues, you know... railroad smokin' blues!”

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Big Boy Henry

Although Richard "Big Boy" Henry was an imposing figure at first glance, he was one of the sweetest, most gentle men ever to sing the blues. Born in Beaufort, North Carolina in 1921, he spent much of his life near the coast earning a modest living for himself and his family. As a youth he was drawn to the music of the itinerant blues singers who worked the streets near his home, and he learned to play the guitar. Before his first marriage, he made a fair name for himself as a powerful singer and versatile guitarist on the thriving Carolina blues scene.

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Big Ron Hunter

Big Ron Hunter hails from around Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and has just released his first album. Hunter picked up guitar in the 1960s and played in various local bands. He was mentored by bluesman Guitar Gabriel and developed his unique style while raising a family and working a day job. Retired now, Hunter is looking to break into the blues scene and play his music.

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Bishop Dready Manning

You may have been going to church all your life, but chances are you have never attended a church with as much spirit as Bishop Dready Manning's St. Mark Holiness Church outside Roanoke Rapids. Bishop Manning, a traditional guitarist, harmonica player, and gospel singer, has infused his church with music, and the spirited singing, often of tunes written by him, is a joy to behold.

"The Lord gave me this way of playing," he explains in his velvety voice," and He told me to use it in his service. So that's just what I'm doing." But Bishop Manning didn't always use his extraordinary musical talent to serve the Lord. In his early days, he was a blues musician playing in clubs and piccolo joints and selling moonshine and he was "out of hand," according to his wife Marie, who is an integral part of his church.

A big change came when he suffered a mysterious hemorrhage in 1962 and was saved both physically and spiritually when some neighbors came to pray over him. "I had a converted mind right then," he says.

His family is a big part of his musical life - he and Marie and their five children toured for years and produced numerous 45s, albums, tapes and CDs. They still sing together in church every Sunday. His church services are rebroadcast on both radio and cable TV and he has a recording studio as well.

Timothy Duffy sums it up when he says, "Besides his tremendous musicianship of guitar and harmonica, Dready is a powerful singer and songwriter. His recorded work has been given rave reviews throughout the world and earned the state of North Carolina great praise for being a home to such a wonderful musician."

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Boo Hanks
James Arthur "Boo" Hanks is an acoustic blues guitarist with roots in the Piedmont string band and blues traditions who began 75 years ago. He saved money for his first guitar by selling packets of garden seeds, picking out the same old-time songs he heard his father playing after long days in the tobacco field. As a young man in the 1940s, Hanks earned pocket change playing guitar at barn dances with his cousins accompanying him on mandolin and spoons. His rich musical repertoire reflects his multiethnic heritage (his ancestors were white, African American, Ocinneechee Indian and family folklore believes they are descendants of Abraham Lincoln's mother Mary Hanks.) Today, Boo Hanks lives in Virgilina, Virginia, just over the North Carolina border a stone throw from the rolling hills where he was born. Drawing from the deep musical well of his region, Boo Hanks showcases his virtuosity in the driving time and delicate finger-style guitar of the classic Piedmont Blues made famous by Blind Boy Fuller.

"Most people, when they hear me play, they think it's two guitars, because I play the bass and the other strings at the same time. They hear say, man that's two guitars, I say and no, me, it's just me by myself. They say, don't believe you, it sounds like two guitars to me!" - Boo Hanks

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Captain Luke
Luther Mayer, known as "Captain Luke," was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1926. He grew up on his grandparent's farm in nearby Clinton, where he followed the furrows barefoot behind the plow as his Uncle Jesse worked and sang to his mule. Luke's ambition at the time was to learn to drive a mule. It was one he never achieved, but he soaked in the music of the countryside as Jesse played his harmonica on the evening porch. At fourteen he moved to Winston-Salem, N.C. with his mother and sister, where the exigencies of the situation carried him increasingly out of school and into the work force. At seventeen he went to work for LaSalle Bell, a junkman who demanded a day's work from his young employee. LaSalle was a large man and Luke soon learned to lift his own end of a scrap motor and heave it onto a flatbed truck without pause or complaint. Early on he had developed a talent for imitation, and Luke began to sing the songs he heard on the radio, everything from the big band singers to hillbilly ballads. ("Back then I had eleventeen voices.")

Luke was blessed with a deep natural baritone. He was accustomed to carrying the low parts in church, and his abilities soon caught the attention of Otis King, who taught him how to hold the low notes and make them rise and fall. Soon Luke was singing bass professionally in King's Gospel Quintet. He also began to entertain at informal gatherings, an avocation that would endear him to friends and strangers alike throughout his life. Accompanied by whatever instrumentation available, Luke would travel in a wide circle from Winston performing in drinkhouses, the social hubs of the African-American community in the North Carolina piedmont. His repertoire changed with the popular music of the changing times and grew to include comedy routines, notably renditions of Amos'n'Andy skits with inflection-perfect renditions of every character. He worked continually, raising four girls and two boys in Winston-Salem. In 1969 he moved to New York City and worked for four years in the garment industry until called back to Winston for a family emergency. He has remained there since.

A chance encounter in the early seventies led to a long association with Guitar Gabriel. Gabe was a master of the country blues, another musical form that suited Luke's voice perfectly, and the two became fixtures in the Winston-Salem drink-house scene, providing a nucleus of entertainment in their community, alongside such local luminaries as Macavine Hayes, Whistlin' Britches, Willa Mae Buckner and Mr Q. Sometime early in this period an admiral's hat caught Luke's eye in Miller's Variety Store and he became in an instant Captain Luke. Although completely unfamiliar with boats, Luke was a leader of men by anyone's standards: the handle fit and it stuck.

Captain Luke's body has been sculpted by a lifetime at labor. His formative years under the scrap metal tutelage of Mr. Bell built biceps that fifty years later swell forth from his sleeveless shirt like a young athlete's. The thick roped muscles of his arms ripple as he lifts a thin cigar from his mouth, then relax as his arms hang loose, almost akimbo, and his dark face cracks into a wide smile. "I'll tell you what I think about the president. He's a man isn't he? She put that thing right out in front of him. I don't care if he had two wives, I'd have done the same thing. " Answers to questions come easily to Luke. His uncommon combination of youthful demeanor and ancient wisdom are perhaps born of his direct approach to the contingencies of everyday life. Luke has been taking care of business for a long time. His is the yoga of a man who has worked hard, played hard, and slept well, and his terse evaluations of the situation leave little room for doubt or argument.

Luke's music and art are rooted firmly in the African-American working class of the Carolina piedmont and the mystique of his message refers continually to the blues experience. However, as a pure entertainer in the milieu of the drink-houses, Luke's style and song selection have periodically changed to suit the needs and desires of his audience. The average blues consumer, (at the moment predominately white), naturally supposes these to be the standard popular forms of the thirties and forties. In the real world the community has its own criteria. In his current collaboration with guitar wizard John Ferguson, Luke explores the broad ranges of the idiom, from its roots in the deep country, (let it not be forgotten that Country music has borrowed heavily from African-American formats) all the way to it's modern pop/showbiz manifestations. From the primitive nursery rhyme Old Black Buck to more familiar sounds of Lightnin' Hopkins and Guitar Gabriel through the rythm'n'blues of Joe Simon to the sentimental songs of Billy Eckstein and last great master of the genre Brook Benton, Luke's rich dry baritone provides a panoramic tour of his musical influences and arrives at an unusual convergence that might be called Outsider Lounge Music, basic and sophisticated in the same moment, that speaks to us with the savage perspicacity of Satchmo in his prime and swings with the easy grace of a young Dean Martin.

Luke's art exhibits the same eclecticism as his songbag. From a day decades ago that a glistening beer can by the roadside spoke to him of beauty and function, he has been fashioning homemade ashtrays, lamps, airplanes, and cars from society's debris. Ubiquitous in the knick-knack shelves and card tables of his Winston-Salem neighborhood, they have become sought-after pieces in the folk-art collector's market.

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Carl Hodges

Carl Hodges of Saluda, Virginia was born in 1931 and is among the few Chesapeake Bay blues artists performing today. In true songster tradition he performs old blues, country, and gospel songs sung with his old-time vibrato laden voice.

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Carl Rutherford
It's a gray world and no yellow line, snow falling harder now. The road to Mayberry twists slick and mean once Winston-Salem recedes in the rear view. There is no Mayberry, of course. It's really Mount Airy. Mount Pilot, also of Andy Griffith Show fame, is really Pilot Mountain, and you can see it from the exit to Pinnacle, North Carolina. On a clear day, that is, you can see it. This is not a clear day.

The slow ride leads to a steep drive, and there at the top is Carl Rutherford's van, cased in ice, cold clothes strewn all over the interior. Next to the van is a cabin, and inside the cabin are three men, two with guitars and one without.

Carl Rutherford is sitting on a chair, holding one of the guitars. He's wearing layers of flannel underneath quilted polyester. Just now he reaches underneath his chair, rooting around in his bucket of medicine in search of something he says is a nebulizer, coughing. A nebulizer blows compressed air, turning Carl's medication into a fog to inhale.

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The Carolina Chocolate Drops
The Carolina Chocolate Drops are a group of young African-American stringband musicians that have come to together to play the rich tradition of fiddle and banjo music in Carolinas' piedmont. Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson both hail from the green hills of the North Carolina Piedmont while Dom Flemons is native to sunny Arizona. Although we have diverse musical backgrounds, we draw our musical heritage from the foothills of the North and South Carolina. We have been under the tutelage of Joe Thompson, said to be the last black traditional string band player, of Mebane, NC and we strive to carry on the long standing traditional music of the black and white communities. Joe's musical heritage runs as deeply and fluidly as the many rivers and streams that traverse our landscape. We are proud to carry on the tradition of black musicians like Odell and Nate Thompson, Dink Roberts, John Snipes, Libba Cotten, Emp White, and countless others who have passed beyond memory and recognition.

A Little on Piedmont Stringband Music
When most of people think of fiddle and banjo music, they think of the southern Appalachian Mountains as the source of this music. While the mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina are great strongholds of traditional music today, they are certainly not the source. The nuances of piedmont stringband music stem from the demographics of the piedmont and thereby its focus on the banjo as the lead instrument. Among black ensembles, the banjo often set the pace and if a fiddle was present and it often was not, it served as accompaniment and not as the lead instrument as is more common in the Appalachian tradition. A guitar or mandolin would have been rare, but unheard of, in these bands but the foundation of this tradition lies rooted in the antebellum combination of fiddle and banjo.

FOR MORE INFO ON THE CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS - CLICK HERE

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Cool John Ferguson

He was born on Saint Helena Island off the coast of South Carolina. His mother is of the Gullah people and John grew up with the old ways all around him. His first guitar was a Harmony #1 with a one-coil pick-up, two knobs, and a Marvel amplifier. He still remembers the shape and look of it and the way it made him feel. He learned to play by listening.

He is uniquely equipped for the task at hand. Born December 3, 1953, he has been playing the guitar since age three. At five he was playing church music professionally, often out-seating musicians ten times his age. For three years he was a featured entertainer on the Low Country Sing on channel 5 Charleston TV, appearing with his three sisters (the Ferguson Sisters), a popular gospel trio. He was also featured on stage every morning at school, where the principal found that live music kept the students civilized before the start of class. In the seventh grade he was a mainstay of his high school band and chorus. Around this time he began what was to be a lengthy association with Earl Davis, his music teacher. John became a fixture in the band room, where Earl taught him music theory and charting and John learned to play every instrument in the room. In the tenth grade John formed his first band, the Soul Connection, playing rhythm and blues at school functions. In his junior year he attended the first integrated high school class in Beaufort and formed an integrated band, the Plastic Society, venturing into psychedelic pop music and beginning to play club dates.

Throughout this time John played guitar and piano at a minimum of two church gigs every Sunday. One day an itinerant preacher rolled into Beaufort in a rusted out '49 Chevy. His name was Reverend Ike "You can't lose with the stuff I use" and he soon set up shop at the United House of Prayer on Duke and Haymore. He hired John for a two week gig and immediately attracted large crowds with his peculiar philosophy of personal empowerment through cash donations for Ike's nascent broadcast empire "The workman is worthy of hire." John pulled his weight and then some. "I brought in just as much attendance as he did, chicks would see me play at the honky-tonks and then come to hear me in church." As Ike's popularity grew and he traveled to preach in ever-larger venues, he took John on the road with him, to Macon, Savannah, and as far west as the Houston Coliseum.

President of the student council, he graduated in 1972 and with his mentor formed the Earl Davis Trio with Earl on sax, Earl's wife on organ, and John on guitar, playing jazz. This began an extremely active period for John. He took on a house gig at the Latai Inn at Fripp Island Resort and was playing four churches on Sunday. His next gig lasted five years, with Stephen Best and the Soul Crusaders, playing black clubs throughout South Carolina. This was followed by a long solo engagement at the Sans Souci in Beaufort, playing dinner jazz interspersed with blues, soul and rock. "I always gave them a little more than they wanted. When it was time to beef things up I knew where to go." He played the Sans Souci four nights a week and it was there, at twenty-seven, that he was married to his wife Brenda. In the years since John has traveled where the music has taken him, equally comfortable in churches and clubs. He has been active on the tent revival circuit, a little-documented but vibrant niche of American religious culture, and has been associated with LaFace Records of Atlanta, Ga. collaborating on pop recordings with his niece Esperanza.

John epitomizes the traditional role of the musician as an integral entity in the everyday life of the community. Through his work in the church he has provided the sound-track for thousands of weddings, funerals, picnics, and parties. He and his sister Bessie made something of a specialty of funerals, working closely with the director to dictate the appropriate tone of the event. "He would say, ' Let them cry, but not too much, then let the spirit out', I would come out with some sad stuff, then unexpectedly cheer them up. And a lot of them would come to see me at the club I was playing that night"

John's musical path is immersion. The man breathes music and plays from the inside out. He commands the rare ability to develop a theme on the fly, incorporating every element of the situation along the way and somehow summing them all up neatly when he feels the end coming. His improvised pieces carry the aesthetic sensibility of careful, painstakingly crafted works, which in fact they are; it is simply all done in real time. Coupled with the willingness to play with anybody, any time, in any style, familiar or not, he possesses a formidable panurgy that is making him a force to be reckoned with in the music industry.

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Cootie Stark
Cootie Stark is one of the last authentic Piedmont blues guitarist/singers alive today. He learned his songs at the feet ofthe originators of Piedmont Blues ‑ Baby Tate, Pink Anderson, Walter Phelps, Peg Leg Sam and Blind Sammy Doolie. Cootie Stark has a repertoire of 100’s of Blues and Gospel songs, making him one of the last direct links to a South long gone.

I've been playing guitar for 50 years,” reports Stark, “I started beating on cans before I got a guitar and my mother told me I was singing since I was a baby.” Although music was always in the forefront, the life of a transient bluesman is hard on the body and hard on the pocket ‑ after years on the road, Cootie was left with little money and a dwindling audience for the deep-rooted blues that defined his style. In the 1980’s, the blind Stark settled into the Woodland Homes Projects in Greenville, NC.

“By then, the real Piedmont blues was pretty much gone,” he says. “All them guys were dead and gone and I wasn’t making no headway.”

In the spring of 1997, Music Maker founder Tim Duffy heard Cootie Stark playing electric guitar and singing Fats Domino songs. Duffy questioned Stark about his knowledge of the old songs and was blown away to find himself face‑to‑face with a Piedmont Blues original. Within months of hooking up with Duffy, Cootie had a new acoustic guitar and a promising career. Stark has been universally praised in his first years as an international blues figure. His abrasive, percussive guitar style melds with a vocal arsenal that ranges from a roughhewn gospel shout to a tight, pretty vibrato. Both European and American concert-goers have been held captive by Stark’s raw and powerful performances.

On his first recording, SUGAR MAN, listeners receive the true, oral tradition of the blues. Stark’s timeless versions of familiar and obscure songs show us that deeprooted blues are still alive and vibrant.

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Cora Mae Bryant
Cora Mae Bryant is the daughter of Georgia guitar legend Curley Weaver. She remembers, "When the weekend came, Daddy would come and get me. We did not know the difference between night and day." Curley would perform from one house party to the next often meeting up with his friends Blind Willie McTell and Buddy Moss. "When we was out partying, they loved to hear all Curley's songs but two they especially loved was Ticket Agent, and Tricks Ain't Working No More. You could really hear their feet stomping. Daddy and I used to sing Wee-Wee Hours together, it was really pretty."

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Cueselle Settle (Mr. Q.)

Mr. Q was born in 1913. He is an old hep-cat whose music just makes you have to smile. A self-taught pianist, he has fashioned his own sound by mixing the piano styles of Art Tatum, Earl Hines and Oscar Peterson interspersed with songs by the Ink Spots.

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Dave McGrew
The Okies and the Arkies used to do it. Now the Mexicans do it. In August they follow the pears and then the apples north from the eastern desert of Oregon and Washington into British Columbia. Some start in May with cherries in California and follow them north then east to Montana before running back for pears. After apples you can settle in an orchard and prune the trees for the winter or go do citrus in California.

For a moment in the 1970s and 1980s, among the Okie and Arkie old-timers, the Mexicans coming in, the fruit tramps were hippies you didn't’t see on television. During the revolution the cameras focused on the sons and daughters of the professionals and managers, at Columbia and Yale. After the revolution they interviewed the bombers who became lawyers, the strike leaders who joined Wall Street.

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Drink Small

They call me the blues Doctor 'cause I can play all the styles, bottleneck, ragtime, Piedmont Blues I can tear them up, Chicago Blues; I am the blues Doctor.

Rich people got the blues because they are trying to keep the money, the poor people are trying to get the money and I ain't got no money.

Jesus had the blues. He had them because he didn't want the devil to get all of the souls. He turned the rocks to souls, so the devil wouldn't get them all. You know he turned the water into wine, I guess he did get drunk. Three quarters of the world is water. I'm glad he didn't turn all of the water into wine or we would be in trouble.

I was born in 1933 in Lee County in Bishopville, South Carolina. I started playing when I was 11 years old. We had an old pump organ; I started playing Coon Shine Baby on that. Then I started on the one string guitar; I played Bottle, Up and Go. My uncle had a guitar around and I fooled around on that. I made my own little guitar, for strings I cut up an old inner tube.

When I was in high school I organized a group called the 6 stars. I was ashamed to sing, I was playing instrumental songs like Blind Boy Fuller stuff. I played piano in the church. Then I began to start singing. I came up playing both blues and gospel. On Friday and Saturday night I would make five dollars a night playing at house parties. That was more than a man plowing a mule all week was getting was. I then went to school to be a barber but I did not want to cut no hair I wanted to cut up.

I became a great guitar player. I joined the Spiritualaires. We recorded on the Vee Jay label. We played the Apollo and toured with Sam Cooke, the Harmonizing Four, and the Staple Singers. We were out there with all the big groups.

When we broke up I came back to Columbia, South Carolina and I started to play for the college kids and they went wild. I recorded a song, "I Love You Alberta" and "Cold, Cold, Rain" on the Sharp label a subsidiary of Savoy. Tarhill Slim was on that label. Since that time I have been to Europe, played at Wolf Trap and toured around the country.

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Eddie Tigner
Eddie Tigner was born on Aug. 11, 1926, in Macon, Georgia. After his father died from mustard gas in World War I, his mother married a coal miner who moved the family to a mining camp in Kentucky.  Eddie fondly remembers listening to bluegrass and country and western music as a child. When he was 14, the family returned South to Atlanta, and Eddie started following his piano-playing mother to house parties, breakdowns, fish fries, and barbecues, where she was in demand as an entertainer.

Eddie didn't learn to play the piano himself, however, until he began his service in the Army in 1945 and was taught by a friend, Edward Louis, at a base in Maryland. Eddie was in charge of booking entertainment at the special service hall each weekend, and often drove to Baltimore to pick up Bill Kenney (of the original Ink Spots) and his group to perform for the servicemen.

Returning to Atlanta after his discharge, Eddie joined the Musicians' Union in 1947 and put together his first group, the Maroon Notes, in which he played vibes. They performed in vaudeville shows at theaters in Atlanta, and often toured through small towns as far as the West Coast of Florida. Eddie also played with legendary blues guitarist Elmore James during the early '50s, when James was living in Atlanta. They performed on weekends at the Lithonia Country Club, which featured all-black motorcycle and stock car races each Saturday.

In 1959, a version of the Ink Spots--one of several that traversed the country playing hotel lounges using the name of the original group-- had a show in Atlanta and needed a pianist. Eddie joined the band and performed steadily as an "Ink Spot" until 1987, booked throughout this entire period by T.D. Kemp of Charlotte, N.C.

These days, Eddie "feeds the children" at his job in an elementary school cafeteria, but he's also been playing in small clubs around Atlanta since 1991. Atlanta guitarist Danny "Mudcat" Dudeck introduced Eddie to the Music Maker Relief Foundation, and he has since appeared at major events including the Chicago Blues Festival and the Blues to Bop Festival in Lugano, Switzerland.

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Elder James Goins
The Goins
Elder James Goins born July 18th, 1921 is Pastor for the Spiritual Holiness Church in Simpson, South Carolina. He and his wife Mother Pauline are a classic example of performing great music at its most basic and powerful best. It just shows you how much that less is more. Their music is a combination of the ancient African musical traditions and the early African American gospel traditions coming together. Electrifying!
-Taj Mahal

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Essie Mae Brooks

Essie Mae Brooks was born in Houston County, Georgia in 1930. Her father was a great drummer in the nearly forgotten African-American tradition called "Drumbeat." He would play the drum every weekend and people would gather and dance all night long. Her grandfather was a harmonica player and Essie started singing to accompany him. She began singing and writing gospel songs as a girl and has never stopped.

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Etta Baker

Etta Baker of Morganton, NC, was born in 1913 and has been playing guitar since the age of 3. She is the premier female Piedmont blues guitar instrumentalist, plays the guitar everyday, and is constantly working on new arrangements. Etta maintains a beautiful yard and garden, and at the age of 91, is matriarch of 108 members in her immediate family.

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George Higgs
George Higgs was born in 1930 in a farming community in Edgecombe County near Speed, North Carolina ("a slow town with a fast name" as he is fond of saying.) He learned to play the harmonica as a child from his father, Jesse Higgs, who enjoyed playing favorite spirituals and folk tunes at home during his spare time. George got to catch the medicine showman and harmonica player Peg Leg Sam playing locally in Rocky Mount during the tobacco market season and he made a lasting impression on the young harp player. He was later attracted to the guitar as a teenager and reluctantly sold a favorite squirrel dog to a neighbor to raise funds to purchase his first. As a result of their close proximity the dog spent more time at George's home than at his new owner's, so he got to have the guitar and keep the company of his dog. - Lightnin' Wells

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Guitar Gabriel
Drink houses in Winston-Salem, North Carolina's black community, like juke joints in the Mississippi Delta, remain a vigorous setting for the perpetuation of the blues at its most real and rooted level. A refuge for the homeless and the down-and-out, as well as a gathering place for friends and lovers, the drink houses are on-going house parties where emotions run high, alcohol flows heavy, and the music is raw and from the heart. It is out of this blues milieu that Guitar Gabriel has recently reemerged to join another blues scene —the blues world that includes recording contracts, write-ups in magazines, and gigs in college-town bars and at festivals overseas.

Gabriel, who was born Robert Lewis Jones, has been a part of that world before. He is familiar to many blues fans as Nyles Jones, the name under which he recorded a highly acclaimed LP, My South, My Blues, for the Gemini label in 1970. The album was reissued in 1988 on the French label, Jambalaya, as Nyles Jones, the Welfare Blues. Mike Leadbitter, writing in Blues Unlimited in 1970, called the single, Welfare Blues, the most important 45 released that year. After seeing no compensation for his efforts, however, Gabriel became disillusioned with the blues scene and returned to Winston-Salem, playing occasionally with gospel groups, as well as in the drink houses.

Gabriel was born in Atlanta on October 12, 1925, moving to Winston-Salem at age five. His father, Sonny Jones (also known, apparently, as Jack Jones, James Johnson, and as Razorblade for an act in which he ate razor blades, mason jars, and light bulbs) recorded for Vocalion in 1939 in Memphis, accompanied by Sonny Terry and Oh Red (George Washington). Sonny Jones also recorded a single for the Orchid label in Baltimore in 1961 (as Sunny Jones).

Guitar Gabriel began hoboing and traveling in his teens and, with a break for service in the Army during World War II, spent his years up until the 1970s largely on the road, with stints working for carnivals and minstrel shows, as well as backing up at one time or another, according to his claims, many of the biggest names in blues through the '40s, '50s, and '60s. His recent return to active performing outside Winston-Salem is due largely to folklorist and musician Timothy Duffy, who located Gabriel in 1991, after hearing about him from the late Greensboro, North Carolina, bluesman James "Guitar Slim Stephens. With Duffy accompanying him as second guitarist on acoustic sets and as a member of his band, Brothers in the Kitchen, Gabriel has been performing frequently at clubs and festivals, and appeared overseas for the first time at Blues Estafette in Holland in November, 1991. Gabriel and Brothers in the Kitchen have also issued a well-received cassette, Do You Know What It Means to Have a Friend?, on their own Karibu label.

While Guitar Gabriel's story is, in many respects, that of the quintessential bluesman, his personality is, at the same time, quite distinctive—reflected in his outrageous headgear, his eloquent ability to express the relationship between his life and his music, and, most especially, in the music itself. Gabriel's repertoire includes an eclectic mixture of Piedmont, Chicago, Texas, and gospel numbers—all done, however, in his own gritty, Piedmont-rooted style that he refers to as toot blues. It is a sound rooted in hard living and nurtured in the drink houses of Winston-Salem, and while Gabriel now leaves his old neighborhoods to play a wide variety of venues, his music has lost none of the emotional edge and the raw intensity needed to carry it over in its home environment, where the blues is still lived every day of the year.
—David Nelson

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Jerry "Boogie" McCain

Jerry "Boogie" McCain is the greatest post war harp player alive today. In 2001 he remains at the height of his powers, constantly writing and delivering amazing live performances with the energy of a teenager. Born in 1930 in Gadsden, Alabama, Jerry began playing his harp and singing along with jukebox records at his fathers barbecue stand, the Green Front Cafe.

He began recording in the early 50s for the Trumpet label making records of his unique blend of country swing and down-home blues. In 55 he recorded for the Excello label and he has continued making great records from the 60s up until present day.

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John Dee Holeman
John Dee Holeman was born in Orange County, North Carolina in 1929. He is a storyteller, dancer and a blues artist that played with musicians who had learned directly from Blind Boy Fuller. He possesses an expressive blues voice and is a wonderful guitarist incorporating both Piedmont and Texas guitar styles. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage fellowship and a North Carolina Folk Heritage award, John Dee has toured the U.S, Europe and Asia. John recently retired from a career as a heavy machine operator and continues to tour both in the states and abroad.

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Lee Gates


Lee Gates was born in Mississippi and moved to Milwaukee as a teenager where he has been playing his brand of down home blues for the past 50 years. Blues legend Albert Collins is his first cousin and you can hear the family influence in Lee's fluid guitar style and tone.

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Lightnin’ Wells

Mike "Lightnin'" Wells was raised in North Carolina and has had an interest in traditional forms of music since childhood. An avid collector of country and blues recordings, these formed the basis for his developing style of playing and singing using a variety of acoustic instruments, including the guitar, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, and harmonica. Variety is a trademark of Wells' musical style and he attempts to educate as well as entertain audiences in his various performances. A Lightnin' Wells performance is a spirited, exciting interpretation of folk blues classics and obscure material based on his over 20 years of experience, performance and research.

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Little Freddie King
Little Freddie's real name is Fread E. Martin and he was born in McComb, Mississippi, July 19, 1940 down the road from Bo Diddley place. His father, Jessie James Martin, was a blues guitarist that worked the weekend southern circuit in the Delta. His father would bring him out on the town when he was out there playin. "I would go out there and sit around on the outside around the juke joints and listenin." He'd be playin and drinkin and everyone was havin' fun. Freddie eventually taught himself how to play guitar and develop his country-style blues or as he calls it "Gut Bucket Blues".

At the age of 17, Freddie moved from the farm to New Orleans to stay with his sister. There he met such upcoming stars as Buddy Guy and Slim Harpo. However, adapting to life in the big city wasn't easy as Freddie explains. "I got lost all the time," he said. "All the houses looked the same. I had to get the police to take me home or else they'd arrest me. Finally one of the policemen told me to look at the street sign and the number on the houses. It got easy to get around after that."

It was in the early 1960's that Freddie was hung with the "Little Freddie King" appellation as he'd been using his real name on gigs up to that point. "Freddy King was really hot then with songs like Hideaway and San-Ho-Zay" said Freddie. People kept telling me I sounded just like Freddy King, so they started calling me "Little Freddie King".

"Big Freddy lived in New Orleans in the Desire Projects for a couple of years. I lived not too far away. I went on a lot of gigs with him. He didn't mind me being called Little Freddie King. He wanted me to go to Texas with him but I couldn't because of my job."

Generally the 1960's were busy years for Freddie, as he played with the likes of Polka Dot Slim, Guitar Grady, Guitar Ray, Snooks Eaglin, Billy Tate, Harmonica Williams, Boogie Bill Webb, Rev. Charles Jacobs (his cousin) and Eddie Lang.

"I pretty much stayed lit up all the time back then," said Freddie. I played a lot around New Orleans area with Harmonica Williams, and then after the job we'd go to Logtown or Bayou Liberty and play. Then we'd come back to New Orleans around one or two in the morning and play the Dew Drop Inn. I'd go get a pint of corn liquor. Then I'd wake up and we'd do it all over again.'

Little Freddie King became a charter member an annual attraction at the New Orleans Jazz Festival and toured Europe with Bo Diddley, Texas Alexander and John Lee Hooker in 1976. His most amazing gig though occurred in 1981, when he embarked on a six-month tour of the Western States when he hosted workshops on the Blues. His 1970 recording titled "Harmonica Williams and Little Freddie King" is believed to be the first electric blues album recorded in New Orleans.

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Little Pink Anderson



Little Pink" Anderson of Spartanburg, SC began singing at medicine shows and carnivals with his legendary father Pink Anderson at the age of 3. He still performs the highly entertaining old folk songs that his Dad made famous.

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Lucille Lindsay

I asked Guitar Gabriel one day if he had any brothers or sisters. He mentioned that he had a sister but he had not seen her in eight years. He gave me her married name and I found her, blind from diabetes, in an awful nursing home. When I reunited this pair the next day they immediately broke into song. I scrambled to put up my recording equipment as they sang. Gabriel had written this spiritual the day their mother passed away. Their emotions were so intense they both began crying and their tears soaked the front of their shirts.

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Macavine Hayes

Macavine Hayes was born in Tampa, Florida on June 3rd 1943. His family farmed and he was the oldest of 5 sisters and 5 brothers. He remembers, "There was always something to do down on the farm, we listened to the radio and got up on the back porch and played the music of Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed."

In the 60s he met Guitar Gabriel playing on the streets of Tampa. He followed his new friend back to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "Gabe taught me how to experience the road, sleep outside, go to some gals house and spend the night sometimes. Go to church on Sunday, we always carried nice suits and shoes. We would look good. We did a lot of travelin'. We went to Atlanta down to Augusta and all through Florida. We played at juke joints and lay a hat down. Gabe was a free spirit and taught me that you can go anywhere you want to go. We ran a drink house together for years down on Claremont Street. Living with Gabe was not a hard life; you just had to drink all the time.

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Mr. Frank Edwards

Mr. Frank Edwards, elder statesman of Atlanta's blues community, died Friday, March 22, 2002 in Greenville, SC. He was 93.

Born March 20, 1909, in Washington, GA, Edwards left home at 14 after a disagreement with his father, bound for St. Augustine, Florida. He bought a guitar and began learning to play, receiving encouragement from guitarist Tampa Red (a.k.a. Hudson Whittaker). Later, Edwards took up harmonica, drawing inspiration from John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson and others.

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Mudcat

Born on the banks of the Mississippi and raised in Georgia, Mudcat dropped out of acting school in New York to pursue a Blues major on the streets. Eventually he graduated to Atlanta where he converted the Northside Tavern into his school of music. His tutelage continues under Cootie Stark, Frank Edwards, Eddie Tigner and Cora Mae Bryant. A world class slide guitarist with a voice so rich it feels fattening, Mudcat's education is something you can feel right to your bones. Mudcat serves on the Foundation's board of directors.

FOR MORE INFO ON MUDCAT - CLICK HERE

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Neal Pattman

Nobody made moonshine, worked a cakewalk, chopped wood or played a harmonica like Neal Pattman (1926-2005).

Losing an arm in a wagon wheel at the age of nine didn't slowed him at all. "66 years ago the Blues knocked on my door and they wouldn't leave." His testimony can be heard in a sound and a style his daddy taught him as a child in the country outside Athens, Georgia.

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Patrick & Cathy Sky
Patrick Sky, for those of you unfamiliar with the '60s, has been involved in singing, playing and performing his music and songs for over thirty years. In the past he has sold out Carnegie Hall and played for standing room only all over Europe and the United States. Among his major appearances are: The Montreal Expo, The Central Park Music Festival, Town Hall in New York and the Royal Festival Hall in London. He has the shared the billing with such artists as Pete Seeger, Buffy Sainte Marie, Joni Mitchell and Emmy Lou Harris, to name a few. Patrick has seven solo albums to his credit on the Vanguard and MGM labels, and his latest release, Through a Window on the Shanachie label. In addition he has produced over thirty records for other artists such as Mississippi John Hurt, Rosalie Sorrells and the great Irish Uilleann piper Seamus Ennis. It was while recording Ennis in the field that Patrick founded Green Linnet Records. This fact and Patrick's involvement in Irish music, especially piping, have made him one of the seminal figures of the Irish music revival in the United States.

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Precious Bryant

Precious Bryant hails from Waverly Hall, Georgia. She is an honest, wonderful songwriter and a spellbinding performer. I met her in 1995; many years had passed since 1967 when folklorist George Mitchell had come knocking on her door. We performed with bluesmen Neal Pattman and Cootie Stark at shows in Atlanta, New York and Washington State. She even went to Switzerland. I learned quickly that Precious does not enjoy traveling, so we concentrated on letting the world know about this magnificent artist.

When I first met Precious she told me:
“I used to take my guitar to school and play it. And I used to play at parties and that sort of thing. I didn’t finish school. I quit in 11th grade. And I got married, went on down to Juniper, stayed down there about 11 years. And so come along George Mitchell, then I got started going places with him and then Fred Fussell came along, so that’s how I got started going out.

I was about nine years old when I started playing guitar. I was small, and my uncle, he had a large guitar and I used to drag it around. I couldn’t tote it. I used to drag it around, and kept messing around with it until I learned how to play. Later on my uncle Sonny bought me a little ole uke for Christmas. And I fooled around with it too and from then on I learned how to play… I used to play banjo. Been a long time since I played banjo. The way I learned how to play a song, I would listen to the song on the radio and write the words down, and I wouldn’t worry about the music, ‘cause I could get the music. All I wanted to know was the words.

The buck-dance tune comes from my daddy. I learned how to play that behind him. I used to make money playing my guitar. I’d go off, especially when I was married, me and my husband would go around and people would listen to me play the guitar, I’d make money. I’d play, they’d put money in my guitar. I’d take a rest break, sit down and rest a little bit, and start back again, and when I’d get home I’d have a guitar full of money. I enjoyed that. Sure did.” -Timothy Duffy

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Preston Fulp


Preston Fulp grew up in Walnut Cove, an area just north of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where his family sharecropped tobacco. Preston took to music at an early age, starting to play the guitar when he was six. By his teens he was proficient on the violin and banjo and was a singer of both blues and hillbilly songs. He played blues with local musicians such as Wheeler Bailey, Arthur Anderson, Blind Blake and Blind Willie McTell.

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Pura Fé
Pura Fé's voice soars the heavens, taking us on a visionary ride, elegantly stating theIndigenous influence on the birth of the Blues. Pura Fé explains the musical contributions made bySoutheastern Indigenous people. “My Nation has been systematically disenfranchised and disregarded. Many people think we have nothing to do with the development of Southern culture. Not only were we captured and shipped off as slaves to West Africa and the Caribbean, we were bred together on slave plantations during colonization of our land.”

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Randy Burns

Randy Burns (b. 1948) is from Connecticut.  He left home at the age of 17 for New York City pursuing his music.  At 18 he landed a gig as the permanent opening act at the legendary Gaslight Club on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village.  During the 60s he recorded for ESP Records.  In the early 70s he recorded for major labels Mercury and Polydor.  Burns performed in New England up into the 90s.  He presently lives in Greenwich Village and continues to write new songs and perform.

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Skeeter Brandon


Despite his relative youth, still in his early 50s, Skeeter’s music reflects the influence of a century of African American songster traditions. He has the capability of earning a living by making music for any audience - black or white.

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Slewfoot & Cary B

Slewfoot was born Mark McLaughlin in 1953. He began playing guitar at the age of 13 and in 1980 he started his career as a New Orleans street musician.

Cary Beckelheimer, born in 1968, graduated with a degree in Theater. She traveled with a children's theater company for 9 years before turning her full attention to music.

Sol is a rare, one of a kind musician. His talent stretches from fiery rock to laid back jazz, and from funky innovative grooves to soulful ballads, always drawing on a deep background in blues.

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Sol
Sol is a rare, one of a kind musician. His talent stretches from fiery rock to laid back jazz, and from funky innovative grooves to soulful ballads, always drawing on a deep background in blues.

Sol began his musical experiences gigging with blues luminaries such as Guitar Gabriel, Captain Luke, and Macavine Hayes. While earning a degree in the Recording Industry, Sol performed extensively throughout Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi fronting his own blues and rock bands.

Sol then graduated to performing nationally and internationally with the true pioneers of the blues including Cootie Starks, Lee Gates, Beverly 'Guitar' Watkins, John Dee Holeman, and Jerry 'Boogie' McCain.

Additionally, Sol has performed with blues heavyweight Taj Mahal, Kenny Wayne Shepard, and the international guitar hero Cool John Ferguson (nominated 2 years -Most Outstanding Guitarist-Living Blues), who he performs with on a regular basis. With Cool John Ferguson, Sol has opened for the great B.B. King, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, and the Derek Trucks Band. Sol's roots run deep into the blues but his unique versatility has allowed him to gig w/ Latin, African, reggae, gospel, jazz, funk, R&B, and folk performers. Sol also heads his own groups performing throughout VA, NC and DC.

With his love of Universal Music as the guiding light, Sol steps out on his own path.

FOR MORE INFO ON SOL - CLICK HERE

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Sweet Betty
Born in Duluth, GA, just northeast of Atlanta, Betty Echols Journey grew up listening to gospel music. (Her mother's singing in church influenced her.) Aspiring to become a singer herself, Betty began singing at parties at her friends' homes. In the mid 1980's, she was introduced to legendary saxophonist, Grady "Fats" Jackson. Jackson was so impressed with Betty's vocals that he began bringing her with him to his performances. It was through Jackson that Betty met former Muddy Waters guitarist, "Steady Rollin" Bob Margolin. Margolin and his band, upon passing thought the southern region of the United States in the early 1990's would regularly perform with Jackson and Betty in such places as Jackson Station nightclub in Hodges, South Carolina and Blind Willie's or Blues Harbor in Atlanta, GA.

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Tad Walters
Born in Canton, OH, raised in Raleigh, NC, Tad Walters began playing the guitar at age twelve. As he was developing his guitar skill, Tad picked up the harmonica a couple years later at fourteen. He was influenced by the likes of Blind Boy Fuller, Robert Lockwood, Charlie Patton, Robert Nighthawk, and John Jackson, among others, and began his professional music career with the Bob Margolin Band in 1996. In that four year period he traveled the world with the band and played with musicians like Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Billy Boy Arnold, Cary Bell, and others. In 2001 one Tad joined the Big Bill Morganfield band and stayed until 2004. Tad is now teaching guitar and harmonica lessons and concentrating on Piedmont blues and old-time jazz with Dave Andrews.

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Whistlin’ Britches


Haskel Thompson was born in Winston-Salem, NC in 1932, and has lived there to this day. Captain Luke gave Haskel his nickname Whistlin' Britches a year ago. He has an amazing spirit and exudes utter joy when he sings. He is the only fellow I have heard who can pop and click his tongue like a bushman.

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Willa Mae Buckner
Willa Mae Buckner was born on June 15th, 1922 in Augusta, Georgia. In her days as a touring performer, Buckner was known as "The Wild Enchantress," "Princess Ejo," "The Snake Lady," and "The World's Only Black Gypsy." Her tent show performances could enthrall any crowd. She was a true performer, showcasing herself as a blues singer, burlesque stripper, contortionist and fire swallower. More than anything, she was an articulate, self-educated and fiercely independent woman who blazed her own trail from the day she ran away from home and joined an all-black tent show at the age of 13. Her frank wit and exotic past set the tone when she sings her risque songs.

Willa was among the first recipients of aid from the Foundation's programs. We were able to provide her money to buy the expensive medicine she had often done without to treat her chronic gout. We bought her heating oil in the winter and placed her in a nursing home when she broke her hip. We transported her to numerous gigs including a performance at Carnegie Hall where she received a standing ovation. We provided comfort in her final days and most sadly arranged her funeral.

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Willie 'Sonny Boy' King

Willie King lives in Pickens County Alabama, just a few miles from Mississippi, several miles from Aliceville. He envisioned and created a non profit organization called the Rural Members Association to teach the young people their heritage and what he calls survival skills.

"We see these kids now, they got all the problems we had coming up-dealing with the oppressor, figuring how to survive, feeling their self-worth under attack; success around them most always wearing a white face unless it's the preacher's and most time he just content to have his fine clothes, nice car, a church where they come, and there on the wall is a blond Jesus. So all that's a problem. But these kids, they got nothing to do. They mess with gangs, with drugs; they got no family teaching them their traditions, the African- American traditions. No tie to the land, the crafts of survival we always practiced in the country; no time for the blues. Now, you can be poor, and ain't nobody likes to be poor, but when you lose your culture you lose everything.

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Dear Friends,

I first walked into Guitar Gabriel’s door in March of 1990. He took one look at me and said "Where you been so long? I know where you want to go, I’ve been there before and I can take you there." He led and I followed. Soon, Gabe and I were fixtures in the drink-houses of Winston-Salem. A few years passed as we performed at clubs and festivals throughout the southeast. We were also able to travel to Europe a few times. When we were not performing, Guitar Gabriel and I were looking up the many old performers he knew.

Musicians such as Macavine Hayes, Mr. Q, Willa Mae Buckner, Guitar Gabriel and Captain Luke became my closest friends. They had all worked in show business, some for their whole lives, some just on weekends while holding a full-time day job. Every one of them had a great story and every story was different. Beside their love of music, they shared the constant struggle to make ends meet. Whether living on meager Social Security checks or in Gabe’s words "singing songs of the times for nickels and dimes"; there was never enough money, even for the basics. I became deeply disturbed by the difficult choices they had to make each month: food or medicine, rent or the car, heat or the telephone. I dedicated myself to finding a way to help these artists and the many others I was beginning to meet.

I began to pick everyone up on check day in my old van and take them to the grocery store, to the post office to get money orders, then downtown to pay the utility bills and back home again. Every two months we would pick up a number of these old entertainers and go stand in the cheese line to collect their commodities. It was a fascinating period of my life, complete immersion in a world not often seen by a young white guitar player.

I created an office in a small utility building behind the rental house Denise and I had in the back of a used car lot in Winston-Salem. From this tin shack I booked gigs and desperately tried to find recording deals for Gabe and the others. I communicated with the world by hand-written postcards because I couldn’t afford the long distance phone bills.

By 1993, I had figured out that the present day blues scene had very little to offer my friends so I began to reach out to a few family friends for help. I had lost my father to leukemia in 1986, but he was a great lover of music and fast friend to many. I began to make a few calls to those who had offered to help if I ever needed them. The first to respond was my dad’s best friend, from Louisville, Kentucky, who sent a tractor-trailer to our small house full of Ensure, a nutritional drink which we gave to Gabe and Willa. It was a tremendous gift and kept these artists in good health.

Then, audio pioneer Mark Levinson returned a call. Mark was one of the few clients that my father, an attorney, had kept after he became ill. A few months before my father passed he had won a very significant case for Mark, which essentially retained his right to work in the hi-fi industry. I told Mark that I had been recording these incredible blues artists for years. He invited me to visit him.

So a few weeks later, in December of 1993, I visited his showroom in New York. Mark was stunned by my humble field recordings. As he listened to the music I began to tell him about the living conditions of these artists. He was moved and decided to help.

It was Mark who envisioned the non-profit and gave us the name Music Maker Relief Foundation. We worked without sleep for two weeks remastering and writing the notes for a compilation CD and booklet, "A Living Past." Mark began using the CD to demonstrate his audio system and ask people to contribute to the cause. Our first support came from the audiophile community. In January of 1994, I returned to North Carolina with a nonprofit foundation and seed money.

With New York as our platform to the world and Mark Levinson as our advocate and spokesperson, there was soon a steady stream of interest and a small stream of donations coming in. In October of 1995 Mark met Eric Clapton at a bistro and shared the Foundation’s story. Intrigued, Eric came to the studio a few weeks later and spent the afternoon listening to field recordings and talking about blues artists and the music. I had the great pleasure of recording a couple of guitar pieces with Eric. This meeting was a springboard for Music Maker to get the word out. We started getting press and meeting celebrities. Tower records distributed our CDs in their NY stores and featured us in their listening stations. Meanwhile, we continued to find performance opportunities for the artists. Donations continued to grow and we were able to send money to more musicians in need.

Next, Mark invited Larry Rosen and David Grusen of N2K Records to his studio to listen to the music. In early 1996, they offered me a job as a producer for a series of releases featuring Music Maker artists. They also offered a very substantial royalty to the Foundation. I took the job and started to put records together. Denise and I traveled extensively across the South with a mobile recording studio, meeting more talented, under-appreciated artists.

By this time Guitar Gabriel had passed on and we had moved to an old farmhouse in rural Pinnacle, North Carolina. I had a large library of field recordings and a small salary as a producer. I was still dedicated to keeping the Foundation alive. One December afternoon, I went to the mailbox to find an envelope addressed to the Foundation. I drove up the driveway thinking it was another CD order. Sitting on top of the hill, I opened the letter and was amazed to find an anonymous donation for a great deal of money. I jumped out of the car and screamed for joy. Then I turned around to watch my car roll down the hill; I had left it in neutral.

This began a period of extreme growth for the Foundation. Knowing the immense need among our recipients, Denise and I immediately began to increase grants, expand programs and include new artists. Within a year, the foundation’s coffers were once again dwindling. Without a word, another large check appeared. It was unbelievable. We became friends with this generous donor and he became the backbone and unsung hero of our organization. All of the artists and my family have the deepest respect and admiration for his guidance and generosity.

N2K Records was just being formed when I was signed. As their marketing plans began to solidify, it became clear that the work we were doing would never be released. Miraculously, in the spring of 1997, Cello Recordings purchased my contract from N2K.

Looking for new support for the foundation I traveled with B.B. King while he recorded "Deuces Wild". B. was happy to help. He introduced me to many stars; the Rolling Stones, Dan Aykroyd, Jeff Beck, Bonnie Raitt and most significantly, to Taj Mahal.

Taj was immediately smitten with Music Maker and got busy fast. He came down to Pinnacle and recorded with Cootie Stark, John Dee Holeman, Algia Mae Hinton, and Neal Pattman. These albums and others, nine in total, were released and distributed through Warner Brothers in 1999. He remains in close contact with us to this day, despite his non-stop touring and recording schedule. We are most fortunate to have this legend champion our cause. The Music Maker family loves him dearly for all he has done for the Foundation.

Taj was also instrumental in helping us obtain the historic Winston Blues Revival tour, which took Music Maker to 36 cities in 1998 and 1999. It was a great joy to be able to meet so many music lovers across America. I can’t express how empowering the experience of first class stages and national press was for Cootie Stark, Neal Pattman, Beverly Guitar Watkins and the other Music Maker artists.

We began the year 2000 without the help of a major sponsor or record company. It is a period where we must prove that we can stand on our own. By good fortune, a donor invited me to meet with him. As a blues fan of many years, he believes in our mission and is impressed with our achievements. Yet, as a businessman he saw the need for a more solid structure for our organization. He introduced us to nonprofit business consultant Fred Tamalonis. With the help of supporter Marc Comer, we hired Fred to evaluate our organization and devise a development plan.
Implementing this plan, we have established the Music Maker Annual Fund and our new Visiting Artist Program.

We are proud to have the great support of Georgia philanthropist Bill Lucado. Bill has taken our mission to heart and pledged a challenge gift of $100,000 to get the Annual Fund up and running. We also wish to give a special thanks Bill Krasilovsky, "Dean of Music Law", who has been instrumental in our success.

It is our hope that one day there will be a Music Maker Center. A place where artists could take residence, share each other’s company and music, record, and hold seminars. We envision a roadside attraction where people come and explore documentary exhibits, have a meal and see a live performance. We wish for everyone to experience the art of these great, unsung heroes of southern music.

So, we continue to work and we dream that one day all of this might come true. We know it is you, our donors, who have gotten us this far and will take us where we want to go. For this, we thank you.
Yours Truly,
Tim and Denise Duffy

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