Blind Boy Fuller
Encyclopedia
Blind Boy Fuller (July 10, 1907 – February 13, 1941) was an American
blues
guitarist
and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues
artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake
, Josh White
, and Buddy Moss
.
, United States
, to Calvin Allen and Mary Jane Walker. He was one of a family of 10 children, but after his mother's death he moved with his father to Rockingham
. As a boy he learned to play the guitar
and also learned from older singers the field hollers, country rags
, and traditional songs and blues
popular in poor, rural areas.
He married Cora Allen young and worked as a labourer, but began to lose his eyesight in his mid-teens. According to researcher Bruce Bastin
, "While he was living in Rockingham he began to have trouble with his eyes. He went to see a doctor in Charlotte who allegedly told him that he had ulcers behind his eyes, the original damage having been caused by some form of snow-blindness." However, there is an alternative story that he was blinded by an ex-girlfriend who threw chemicals in his face.
By 1928 he was completely blind, and turned to whatever employment he could find as a singer and entertainer, often playing in the streets. By studying the records of country blues players like Blind Blake
and the "live" playing of Gary Davis
, Allen became a formidable guitarist, and played on street corners and at house parties in Winston-Salem, NC, Danville, VA
, and then Durham, North Carolina
. In Durham, playing around the tobacco warehouses, he developed a local following which included guitarists Floyd Council
and Richard Trice, as well as harmonica player Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry
, and washboard player/guitarist George Washington
.
In 1935, Burlington
record store manager and talent scout James Baxter Long
secured him a recording session with the American Recording Company (ARC). Allen, Davis and Washington recorded several tracks in New York City
, including the traditional "Rag, Mama, Rag". To promote the material, Long decided to rename Allen as "Blind Boy Fuller", and also named Washington Bull City Red
.
Over the next five years Fuller made over 120 sides, and his recordings appeared on several labels. His style of singing was rough and direct, and his lyrics explicit and uninhibited as he drew from every aspect of his experience as an underprivileged, blind Black person on the streets—pawnshops, jailhouses, sickness, death—with an honesty that lacked sentimentality. Although he was not sophisticated, his artistry as a folk singer lay in the honesty and integrity of his self-expression. His songs contained desire, love, jealousy, disappointment, menace and humor.
In April 1936, Fuller recorded ten solo performances, and also recorded with guitarist Floyd Council
. The following year, after auditioning for J. Mayo Williams
, he recorded for the Decca
label, but then reverted to ARC. Later in 1937, he made his first recordings with Sonny Terry. In 1938 Fuller, who was described as having a fiery temper, was imprisoned for shooting a pistol at his wife, wounding her in the leg, causing him to miss out on John Hammond
's "From Spirituals to Swing
" concert in NYC that year. While Fuller was eventually released, it was Sonny Terry who went in his stead, the beginning of a long "folk music" career. Fuller's last two recording sessions took place in New York City during 1940.
Fuller's repertoire included a number of popular double entendre "hokum
" songs such as "I Want Some Of Your Pie", "Truckin' My Blues Away" (the origin of the phrase "keep on truckin'"), and "Get Your Yas Yas Out" (adapted as "Get Your Ya-Yas Out" for the origin of a later Rolling Stones album title), together with the autobiographical "Big House Bound" dedicated to his time spent in jail.
Though much of his material was culled from traditional folk and blues numbers, he possessed a formidable finger-picking guitar style. He played a steel National resonator guitar
. He was criticised by some as a derivative musician, but his ability to fuse together elements of other traditional and contemporary songs and reformulate them into his own performances, attracted a broad audience. He was an expressive vocalist and a masterful guitar player, best remembered for his uptempo ragtime hits including "Step It Up and Go". At the same time he was capable of deeper material, and his versions of "Lost Lover Blues", "Rattlesnakin' Daddy" and "Mamie" are as deep as most Delta blues. Because of his popularity, he may have been overexposed on records, yet most of his songs remained close to tradition and much of his repertoire and style is kept alive by other Piedmont artists to this day.
in July 1940 (probably an outcome of excessive drinking) but continued to require medical treatment. He died at his home in Durham, North Carolina on February 13, 1941 at 5:00 PM of pyemia
due to an infected bladder, GI tract and perineum, plus kidney failure.
He was so popular when he died that his protégé Brownie McGhee
recorded "The Death of Blind Boy Fuller" for the Okeh
label, and then reluctantly began a short lived career as Blind Boy Fuller No. 2 so that Columbia Records could cash in on his popularity.
Blind Boy Fuller's final resting place is Grove Hill Cemetery, located on private property in Durham, North Carolina. State records indicate that this was once an official cemetery, and Fuller's interment is recorded. The only remaining headstone is that of Mary Caston Langey. The funeral arrangements were handled by McLaurin Funeral Home of Durham, North Carolina, and the burial took place on February 15, 1941.
Blind Boy Fuller has been recognized on two different plaques in the City of Durham. The North Carolina
Division of Archives and History plaque is located a few miles north of Fuller's gravesite, along Fayetteville St. in Durham
. The City of Durham
officially recognized Fuller on July 16, 2001, and the commemorating plaque is located along the American Tobacco Trail
, adjacent to the property where Fuller's unmarked grave is located (several hundred feet east of Fayetteville St.).
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
guitarist
Guitarist
A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...
and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues
Piedmont blues
Piedmont blues refers primarily to a guitar style, the Piedmont fingerstyle, which is characterized by a fingerpicking approach in which a regular, alternating thumb bass string rhythmic pattern supports a syncopated melody using the treble strings generally picked with the fore-finger,...
artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake
Blind Blake
"Blind" Blake was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist.-Biography:...
, Josh White
Josh White
Joshua Daniel White , better known as Josh White, was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names "Pinewood Tom" and "Tippy Barton" in the 1930s....
, and Buddy Moss
Buddy Moss
Eugene "Buddy" Moss was, in the estimation of many blues scholars, one of two the most influential East Coast blues guitarists to record in the period between Blind Blake's final sessions in 1932 and Blind Boy Fuller's debut in 1935...
.
Life and career
Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North CarolinaWadesboro, North Carolina
Wadesboro is a town in Anson County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 5,780 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Anson County.-Geography:Wadesboro is located at ....
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, to Calvin Allen and Mary Jane Walker. He was one of a family of 10 children, but after his mother's death he moved with his father to Rockingham
Rockingham, North Carolina
Rockingham is a city in Richmond County, North Carolina, United States named after the Marquis of Rockingham. The population was 9,672 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Richmond County...
. As a boy he learned to play the guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
and also learned from older singers the field hollers, country rags
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
, and traditional songs and blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
popular in poor, rural areas.
He married Cora Allen young and worked as a labourer, but began to lose his eyesight in his mid-teens. According to researcher Bruce Bastin
Bruce Bastin
Bruce Bastin is a folklorist and a leading expert on the blues styles of the South Eastern states of America ....
, "While he was living in Rockingham he began to have trouble with his eyes. He went to see a doctor in Charlotte who allegedly told him that he had ulcers behind his eyes, the original damage having been caused by some form of snow-blindness." However, there is an alternative story that he was blinded by an ex-girlfriend who threw chemicals in his face.
By 1928 he was completely blind, and turned to whatever employment he could find as a singer and entertainer, often playing in the streets. By studying the records of country blues players like Blind Blake
Blind Blake
"Blind" Blake was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist.-Biography:...
and the "live" playing of Gary Davis
Reverend Gary Davis
Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis, was an American blues and gospel singer and guitarist, who was also proficient on the banjo and harmonica...
, Allen became a formidable guitarist, and played on street corners and at house parties in Winston-Salem, NC, Danville, VA
Danville, Virginia
Danville is an independent city in Virginia, United States, bounded by Pittsylvania County, Virginia and Caswell County, North Carolina. It was the last capital of the Confederate States of America. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Danville with Pittsylvania county for...
, and then Durham, North Carolina
Durham, North Carolina
Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Durham County and also extends into Wake County. It is the fifth-largest city in the state, and the 85th-largest in the United States by population, with 228,330 residents as of the 2010 United States census...
. In Durham, playing around the tobacco warehouses, he developed a local following which included guitarists Floyd Council
Floyd Council
Floyd Council was an American blues guitarist and singer. He became a well-known practitioner of the Piedmont blues sound from that area, popular throughout the southeastern region of the US in the 1930s....
and Richard Trice, as well as harmonica player Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry
Sonny Terry
Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry was a blind American Piedmont blues musician. He was widely known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers, and imitations of trains and fox hunts.-Career:Terry was born in Greensboro, Georgia...
, and washboard player/guitarist George Washington
Bull City Red
Bull City Red was an American, Piedmont blues guitarist, singer, and predominately washboard player, most associated with Blind Boy Fuller and the Reverend Gary Davis...
.
Burlington, North Carolina
Burlington is a city in Alamance and Guilford counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the principal city of the Burlington, North Carolina Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Alamance County, in which most of the city is located. The population was 49,963 at the 2010...
record store manager and talent scout James Baxter Long
J. B. Long
James Baxter Long, Sr. was an American store manager, owner, and record company talent scout, responsible in the 1930s for discovering Fulton Allen and Gary Davis, among other notable blues musicians.-Biography:Long was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina to parents Henry Baxter Long and...
secured him a recording session with the American Recording Company (ARC). Allen, Davis and Washington recorded several tracks in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, including the traditional "Rag, Mama, Rag". To promote the material, Long decided to rename Allen as "Blind Boy Fuller", and also named Washington Bull City Red
Bull City Red
Bull City Red was an American, Piedmont blues guitarist, singer, and predominately washboard player, most associated with Blind Boy Fuller and the Reverend Gary Davis...
.
Over the next five years Fuller made over 120 sides, and his recordings appeared on several labels. His style of singing was rough and direct, and his lyrics explicit and uninhibited as he drew from every aspect of his experience as an underprivileged, blind Black person on the streets—pawnshops, jailhouses, sickness, death—with an honesty that lacked sentimentality. Although he was not sophisticated, his artistry as a folk singer lay in the honesty and integrity of his self-expression. His songs contained desire, love, jealousy, disappointment, menace and humor.
In April 1936, Fuller recorded ten solo performances, and also recorded with guitarist Floyd Council
Floyd Council
Floyd Council was an American blues guitarist and singer. He became a well-known practitioner of the Piedmont blues sound from that area, popular throughout the southeastern region of the US in the 1930s....
. The following year, after auditioning for J. Mayo Williams
J. Mayo Williams
Jay Mayo "Ink" Williams was a pioneering African-American producer of recorded blues music. Ink Williams earned his nickname by his ability to get the signatures of talented African-American musicians on recording contracts...
, he recorded for the Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
label, but then reverted to ARC. Later in 1937, he made his first recordings with Sonny Terry. In 1938 Fuller, who was described as having a fiery temper, was imprisoned for shooting a pistol at his wife, wounding her in the leg, causing him to miss out on John Hammond
John H. Hammond
John Henry Hammond II was an American record producer, musician and music critic from the 1930s to the early 1980s...
's "From Spirituals to Swing
From Spirituals to Swing
From Spirituals to Swing was the title of two concerts presented by John Hammond in Carnegie Hall on 23 December 1938 and 24 December 1939. The concerts included performances by Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson, Helen Humes, Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, Mitchell's...
" concert in NYC that year. While Fuller was eventually released, it was Sonny Terry who went in his stead, the beginning of a long "folk music" career. Fuller's last two recording sessions took place in New York City during 1940.
Fuller's repertoire included a number of popular double entendre "hokum
Hokum
Hokum is a particular song type of American blues music - a humorous song which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make sexual innuendos...
" songs such as "I Want Some Of Your Pie", "Truckin' My Blues Away" (the origin of the phrase "keep on truckin'"), and "Get Your Yas Yas Out" (adapted as "Get Your Ya-Yas Out" for the origin of a later Rolling Stones album title), together with the autobiographical "Big House Bound" dedicated to his time spent in jail.
Though much of his material was culled from traditional folk and blues numbers, he possessed a formidable finger-picking guitar style. He played a steel National resonator guitar
Resonator guitar
A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more spun metal cones instead of the wooden sound board . Resonator guitars were originally designed to be louder than conventional acoustic guitars which were overwhelmed by horns and percussion...
. He was criticised by some as a derivative musician, but his ability to fuse together elements of other traditional and contemporary songs and reformulate them into his own performances, attracted a broad audience. He was an expressive vocalist and a masterful guitar player, best remembered for his uptempo ragtime hits including "Step It Up and Go". At the same time he was capable of deeper material, and his versions of "Lost Lover Blues", "Rattlesnakin' Daddy" and "Mamie" are as deep as most Delta blues. Because of his popularity, he may have been overexposed on records, yet most of his songs remained close to tradition and much of his repertoire and style is kept alive by other Piedmont artists to this day.
Death
Fuller underwent a suprapubic cystostomySuprapubic cystostomy
A suprapubic cystostomy is a surgically-created connection between the urinary bladder and the skin which is used to drain urine from the bladder in individuals with obstruction of normal urinary flow...
in July 1940 (probably an outcome of excessive drinking) but continued to require medical treatment. He died at his home in Durham, North Carolina on February 13, 1941 at 5:00 PM of pyemia
Pyaemia
Pyaemia is a type of septicaemia that leads to widespread abscesses of a metastatic nature. It is usually caused by the staphylococcus bacteria by pus-forming organisms in the blood. Apart from the distinctive abscesses, pyaemia exhibits the same symptoms as other forms of septicaemia...
due to an infected bladder, GI tract and perineum, plus kidney failure.
He was so popular when he died that his protégé Brownie McGhee
Brownie McGhee
Walter Brown McGhee was a Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.-Life and career:...
recorded "The Death of Blind Boy Fuller" for the Okeh
Okeh Records
Okeh Records began as an independent record label based in the United States of America in 1918. From 1926 on, it was a subsidiary of Columbia Records.-History:...
label, and then reluctantly began a short lived career as Blind Boy Fuller No. 2 so that Columbia Records could cash in on his popularity.
Burial location
Blind Boy Fuller has been recognized on two different plaques in the City of Durham. The North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
Division of Archives and History plaque is located a few miles north of Fuller's gravesite, along Fayetteville St. in Durham
Durham, North Carolina
Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Durham County and also extends into Wake County. It is the fifth-largest city in the state, and the 85th-largest in the United States by population, with 228,330 residents as of the 2010 United States census...
. The City of Durham
Durham, North Carolina
Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Durham County and also extends into Wake County. It is the fifth-largest city in the state, and the 85th-largest in the United States by population, with 228,330 residents as of the 2010 United States census...
officially recognized Fuller on July 16, 2001, and the commemorating plaque is located along the American Tobacco Trail
American Tobacco Trail
The American Tobacco Trail is a long Rails-to-Trails project located in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, running along an abandoned railroad bed originally built for the American Tobacco Company in the 1970s. The route crosses through the City of Durham, Durham County, Chatham...
, adjacent to the property where Fuller's unmarked grave is located (several hundred feet east of Fayetteville St.).
External links
- Remembering Blind Boy Fuller (interviews with Boo Hanks, Glenn Hinson, Joe Newberry, and Tim Duffy)