Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Popular Music, from Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk

Description

This book is a love letter to the artists, scenes, and sounds defining North Carolina's extraordinary contributions to American popular music. David Menconi spent three decades immersed in the state's music, where traditions run deep but the energy expands in countless directions. Menconi shows how working-class roots and rebellion tie North Carolina's Piedmont blues, jazz, and bluegrass to beach music, rock, hip-hop, and more. From mill towns and mountain coves to college-town clubs and the stage of American Idol, Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk, Step It Up and Go celebrates homegrown music just as essential to the state as barbecue and basketball. Spanning a century of history from the dawn of recorded music to the present, and with sidebars and photos that help reveal the many-splendored glory of North Carolina's sonic landscape, this is a must-read for every music lover. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Prologue: March 1991 Minstrel of the Appalachians: Bascom Lamar Lunsford 1. Linthead Pop: Charlie Poole, the Father of Mill-Town Rock (and the First Rock Star) “Orange Blossom Special”: Ervin T. Rouse 2. Step It Up and Go: Blind Boy Fuller, Durham, and the Piedmont Blues Keeping the Blues Alive: Music Maker Relief Foundation The First Ladies of Piedmont Blues: Elizabeth Cotten and Etta Baker The Gospel Truth: Mitchell’s Christian Singers 3. Through the Airwaves: Arthur Smith in Charlotte Mountain Man: Wade Mainer On Tape: Reflection Sound Studios 4. Rocket Man: Earl Scruggs and the Birth of Bluegrass The Innovators: George Shuffler and Bobby Hicks Sidemen to the Stars: Steep Canyon Rangers and Chatham County Line 5. From Gospel to Rhythm and Blues: The “5” Royales and the Rise of a New African American Sound “Freek’n You”: Jodeci “Hold My Mule”: Shirley Caesar Kinston Calling: Maceo Parker “Rough Side of the Mountain”: The Reverend F. C. Barnes 6. The American Folk Revival Comes to North Carolina: Doc Watson Carrying It Forward: David Holt “The Coo Coo Bird”: Clarence “Tom” Ashley The Spark: Tift Merritt 7. Breaking Color Lines at the Beach: The Embers and Beach Music Dominoes to Drifters: Clyde McPhatter and Ben E. King The Pioneer: Jimmy Cavallo 8. The Eight-Track Era of Rock and Roll: Nantucket’s Long Way to the Top Brothers of the Road: Sidewinder, Cry of Love “Deliverance”: Corrosion of Conformity Power Ballads: FireHouse 9. Combo Corner: Mitch Easter’s Winston-Salem Your Sorry Ever After: The Connells Time Capsule: Greetings from Comboland, Volumes 1–3 “Shape Up, Firm Up, Tone Up”: The Cosmopolitans 10. Chapel Hill: The “Next Seattle” Era The New Frontier: WXYC and alt.music.chapel-hill The University of North Carolina’s Hollywood Outpost: Peyton Reed, Dave Burris “Carolina in My Mind”: James Taylor 11. How to Make It in the Music Business without Really Trying: Colonial, Sugar Hill, and Merge Records “Yep Roc Heresy”: Yep Roc Records “Tobacco Road”: John D. Loudermilk 12. Y’alternative: The Rise of Americana “God Almighty, It’s a Good Feeling: Lowriding as Experience”—Excerpt of Mike Taylor’s 2009 University of North Carolina Thesis Electronic Music as Campfire Folk: Sylvan Esso 13. Salvation Songs: The Avett Brothers Greenville Calling: Valient Thorr, Future Islands “Such Jubilee”: Mandolin Orange 14. Songs of Immigrants and Emigrants: From Nina Simone to the Kruger Brothers Jazz Men: Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane “Rumble”: Link Wray Asheville Calling: Robert Moog Genius: Rhiannon Giddens “Mademoiselle Mabry”: Betty Davis “Take the ‘A’ Train”: Billy Strayhorn 15. Hip-Hop Goes to College: 9th Wonder and Little Brother “The Choice Is Yours”: Black Sheep “Raise Up”: Petey Pablo Dreamville: J. Cole 16. Famous on Television: Scotty McCreery, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino, and American Idol Freakonomics: Stephen Dubner, John Darnielle Epilogue: September 2013 Acknowledgments Readings Selected Discography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z