Carl Ray has just the country music flair
we’ve all come to love and appreciate in the tradition of great country
music. This singer, song writer, likened to Vince Gill for his tenor
appeal, has made a great impact on the country music scene with his
incredible talent, handsome smile, dynamic personality, and hypnotic
voice.
Born and raised in Houston, Texas, he highlighted the major stage as a
young person while opening the stage for The Spinners, BB King, Teddy
Pendergrass, and Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes. As his musical
interest developed and expanded, Ray began writing more of his own
songs, and he was soon discovered by Reggae International Artist, Johnny
Nash. It was Ray’s relationship with Nash that led this
young prodigy and developed his love for country music.
In the 1970s, after 25 years of research on her own, Dena
Epstein published a series of papers and her monumental book, Sinful
Tunes
and Spirituals: Black Folks Music to the Civil War, which
shattered myths that African slaves arrived in the Americas "culturally
naked." She documented a musical culture among Africans and
African-Americans that was rich with song, dance and instrumentation.
In 2009 Jim Carrier was able to interview Dena and produced a film about
her life and legacy titled "The Librarian and The Banjo".
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.
In the spirit of independent, community-based music comes Sankofa
Strings, a trio of African American artists in love with self-made
music. Armed with fiddles and 'jos, bones and drums, Sankofa
Strings is taking that "Old Time" sound and using it to bring the
people together again. Young and old love this music—it is deep in our
collective memory. Come back, and let's go forward together.
Lesley Riddle never became a professional
musician; however, it is his contribution to country music for which he
is most remembered. Maybelle Carter credited Riddle with teaching her
the "bottleneck" style of guitar picking, in which the index finger
plays the melody while the thumb keeps the rhythm on the bass strings.
Riddle taught the Carter Family such songs as "The Cannon Ball," "1 Know
What It Means To Be Lonesome," and "Let the Church Roll On."
Joe
Thompson is an 87 year-old Old-time traditional black string band
musician from Cedar Grove, North Carolina in the Piedmont region near
the Virginia border. Joe plays fiddle and sings in his Granddaddy's
style of music that can be traced in America to the 1700's, and even
earlier to origins in Africa. Joe is one of the last of the black
musicians of his generation who play this style of music. His music
builds community by crossing boundaries of generations, races, and
cultures.
Richard (Richie) Brown has been a part-time
bluegrass musician in the Boston area since the mid-sixties. Richard has
played with several prominent New England bands and occasionally filled
in with nationally known bluegrass artists, as well. He has done
mandolin workshops with Ron Thomason, Dave McLaughlin, and Lou Martin at
the Joe Val Memorial Bluegrass Festival and other events for the Boston
Bluegrass Union, and with Mike Holmes at the New England Folk Festival.
Richard's playing is heavily influenced by Bill Monroe's style and "old
style" mandolin players. He currently plays mandolin and sings in the
Boston-based Reunion Band with Dave Dillon, Lauck Benson,
Margaret Gerteis and Art Schatz.
Clarence
"Gatemouth"
Brown was born on this date in 1924. He was an
African-American musician. Given the "Gatemouth" handle by a high school
instructor who accused Brown of having a "voice like a gate," He played
an impressive array of instruments such as guitar, fiddle, mandolin,
viola as well as harmonica and drums. He was featured on the TV show Hee
Haw with pal Roy Clark after they cut a 1979 duet album for MCA, Makin'
Music. During his career, Brown recorded 30 records. He won a Grammy
Award for Traditional Blues in 1983 for his album, Alright Again.
Gatemouth Brown passed away on September 10, 2005 in Orange, TX.
The Ebony Hillbillies are not only one of the last
black string bands in AMERICA, but they are the only string band based
in NYC. Consisting of fiddle, banjo, washboard and bass fiddle,
They have successfully created a following that has crossed over to
audiences in pop, country, bluegrass, folk, jazz and beyond while
maintaining their grassroots credibility.
. . . These days the old-time music and dance scene is predominantly
white. It is rare to see an African-American musician or dancer at Mt.
Airy, Clifftop, or other music festivals where old-time or bluegrass
music is being played. There are a few, such as fiddler Earl
White, who was an early member of the Green Grass Cloggers, but
how many other black old-time musicians or dancers do you know? That is
why I remember the day, a number of years ago, when I first saw Arthur
Grimes. He was clogging in cowboy boots at a square dance I was
calling at Merlefest in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Since that time,
we have become friends, and we have shared the dance floor many times.
But it wasn't until last December, when I interviewed him at the Boone
Drug Store in Boone, that I learned how he got involved in old-time
dancing.
Black
String Revival --- "Before the Blues--and the phonograph--
revolutionized popular music, African-American string bands featuring
banjo and fiddle played for "frolics" (square dances), parades, house
parties, corn shuckings, funerals, and baby christenings. Largely
forgotten, this vital musical tradition survived into the 1950s. Now a
new generation of blacks is rediscovering and reinvigorating the string
band tradition. Black and white scholars are documenting the African
origins of the banjo and how African-Americans adapted it. At the same
time, young African-American string bands like The Carolina Chocolate
Drops, The Ebony Hillbillies, Sankofa Strings, and Don Vappie and His
Creole Jazz Serenaders are reinventing traditional banjo and fiddle
music. Black String Revival, an hour-long documentary, will tell the
story of the rise and fall and the rise again of the Black string band
tradition."
The name of Joe
Thompson is hardly well known in music circles and yet in some
ways he should be regarded as one of the most historically important
American traditional performers active today. For, since his
re-emergence in the Seventies and introduction to a wider audience, Joe
has upheld and represented a tradition of Afro-American country fiddling
now all but vanished.
The name
Arnold Shultz is one we need to become better aware of.
Arnold was a wandering fiddler/guitarist in Kentucky who had a wide
range of influence. It is documented that he was a major influence
for Bill Monroe, Merle Travis and Ike Everly (father to the Everly
Brothers). He lived from 1886-1931 and unfortunately, was never
recorded.
The Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation is
keeping East coast acoustic folk blues alive. Through weekly
Saturday jams, performances, workshops, exhibits, and lectures, AEBHF
carries on the educational tradition of celebrated Piedmont blues artist
Archie Edwards.
African-American Fiddlers on Early Phonograph Records
(Many black musicians active during the 1920s and '30s came from a
string-band tradition rooted in the 19th century, an era predating the
blues when fiddles and banjos were the predominant instruments, and
guitars a rarity. Although the blues signaled a major shift in
African-American music, the older traditions proved resilient, and a
number of black string bands were documented on early phonograph records
in spite of marketing strategies that frequently excluded them. Record
company executives, ever mindful of profit margins, were impressed with
the sweeping popularity of blues music among black audiences, and felt
reluctant to take a chance on the older forms of African-American music.
Black fiddlers and string bands, still common in the South throughout
the 1920s, were not entirely ignored by the record industry, but were
they were sadly under-represented.)
FOLKS, HE SURE DO PULL SOME BOW! It's a
funny thing. As we embark further on our journey into the new century,
we are just now starting to rediscover all the long-forgotten, wonderful
things about the 20th. Whether it's bluegrass or early jazz, many music
lovers have developed a growing fondness for the musical styles of
yesteryear. The result has been a slow but growing interest in older
recorded music, music trapped on old 78 RPM records, just waiting to be
unleashed by modern technology.
Vintage Fiddle Music, 1927-1935. Blues,
Jazz,
Stomps, Shuffles & Rags
The Black Banjo-Playing Tradition in Virginia and West
Virginia (In 1781, Thomas Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of
Virginia that "The instrument proper to [blacks] is the Banjar, which
they brought hither from Africa, and which is the original of the
guitar, its lower chords being precisely the four lower chords of the
guitar." While Jefferson was wrong about the banjo being the original of
the guitar, he was right about its having been brought from Africa and
about its being "proper" to blacks, which I take to mean uniquely their
instrument and rather widely played by them.)
The
Banjo's African American Heritage
This article was written by Tony Thomas, the leading African American
scholar of the banjo. With Súle Greg Wilson, Thomas co-organized the
2005 Black Banjo Gathering, served as contributing historian to the PBS
documentary Give Me the Banjo, plays banjo and guitar with the Ebony
Hillbillies, and has presented on Black banjo history and taught banjo
at old time music, blues, and banjo festivals, universities, and public
schools in the United States and Europe. His work has been published in
periodicals like The Black Scholar and the Old Time Herald and is
forthcoming at Illinois and Duke University presses. He can be reached
for presentations, performance, and classes at BlackBanjoEducation@outlook.com
The Reunion Band Known for its tight vocal
harmonies and solid traditional bluegrass sound, the Reunion Band
features veteran Boston-area musicians Richard Brown (mandolin), Dave
Dillon (rhythm guitar), Margaret Gerteis (acoustic bass), Laura Orshaw
(fiddle) and most recently BB Bowness (banjo) . The band, which has been
around since 2002, takes its name from the fact that its members have
played together off and on and in various configurations for over 30
years.
Black Cowboys, is a website dedicated to telling
the story of African American American Cowboys (which contrary to the
old westerns portrayed in Hollywood, did exist and were a part of the
history of the West.
