Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen, July 10, 1904
February 13, 1941) was an American
blues guitarist and singer. Fuller was one of the most popular of the recorded
Piedmont blues artists, rural African Americans, along with
Blind Blake
Arthur Blake (1896 – December 1, 1934), known as Blind Blake, was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He is known for recordings he made for Paramount Records between 1926 and 1932.
Early life
Little is known of Blake's life. ...
,
Josh White
Joshua Daniel White (February 11, 1914 – September 5, 1969) 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.
White grew up in the Sout ...
, and
Buddy Moss.
Life and career
Allen was born in
Wadesboro, North Carolina
Wadesboro is a town in Anson County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 5,049 at the 2020 census. The town was originally found in 1783 as New Town but changed by the North Carolina General Assembly to Wadesboro in 1787 to honor C ...
, United States,
one of ten children of Calvin Allen and Mary Jane Walker. Most sources date his birth to 1907, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc indicate 1904.
After the death of his mother, he moved with his father to
Rockingham, North Carolina
Rockingham is a city in Richmond County, North Carolina, United States, named after the Marquess of Rockingham. The population was 9,558 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Richmond County.
The city is the home of Rockingham Speedway, f ...
. As a boy he learned to play the guitar and also learned from older singers the field hollers, country
rags
Rag, rags, RAG or The Rag may refer to:
Common uses
* Rag, a piece of old cloth
* Rags, tattered clothes
* Rag (newspaper), a publication engaging in tabloid journalism
* Rag paper, or cotton paper
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Rags'' (1915 ...
, traditional songs and
blues popular in poor rural areas.
He married young, to Cora Allen, and worked as a laborer. He began to lose his eyesight when he was in his mid-teens.
According to the researcher
Bruce Bastin
Bruce Bastin (born 19 September 1939) is an English folklorist and a leading expert on the blues styles of the southeastern states of America, ( East Coast Blues and Piedmont Blues). In 2022, his publication ''Red River Blues: The Blues Traditio ...
, "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." Only the first part of this diagnosis was correct. A 1937 eye examination attributed his vision loss to the long-term effects of untreated
neonatal conjunctivitis
Neonatal conjunctivitis is a form of conjunctivitis (inflammation of the outer eye) which affects newborn babies following birth. It is typically due to neonatal bacterial infection, although can also be non-infectious (e.g. chemical exposure). I ...
.
By 1928 he was completely blind. He 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
Arthur Blake (1896 – December 1, 1934), known as Blind Blake, was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He is known for recordings he made for Paramount Records between 1926 and 1932.
Early life
Little is known of Blake's life. ...
and live performances by
Gary Davis, Allen became a formidable guitarist, playing on street corners and at house parties in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Winston-Salem is a city and the county seat of Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States. In the 2020 census, the population was 249,545, making it the second-largest municipality in the Piedmont Triad region, the 5th most populous city in ...
;
Danville, Virginia
Danville is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States, located in the Southside Virginia region and on the fall line of the Dan River. It was a center of tobacco production and was an area of Confederate activity ...
; and then
Durham, North Carolina.
In Durham, playing around the tobacco warehouses, he developed a local following, which included the guitarists
Floyd Council
Floyd Council (September 2, 1911 – May 9, 1976) was an American blues guitarist, mandolin player, and singer. He was a practitioner of the Piedmont blues, which was popular in the southeastern United States in the 1920s and 1930s. He was ...
and
Richard Trice, the harmonica player Saunders Terrell (better known as
Sonny Terry), and the
washboard player and guitarist
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...
.
In 1935,
James Baxter Long, a record store manager and talent scout in
Burlington, North Carolina, secured Allen 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 records, Long credited Allen as Blind Boy Fuller and Washington as
Bull City Red
Bull City Red (born George Washington, February 19, 1917 – October 1958) was an American Piedmont blues guitarist, singer, and predominantly washboard player, most closely associated with Blind Boy Fuller and the Reverend Gary Davis. Lit ...
.
Over the next five years Fuller recorded over 120 sides, which were released by several labels. His style of singing was rough and direct, and his lyrics were explicit and uninhibited, drawing on every aspect of his experience as an underprivileged, blind black man 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 expressed desire, love, jealousy, disappointment, menace and humor.
In April 1936, Fuller recorded ten solo performances and also recorded with guitarist
Floyd Council
Floyd Council (September 2, 1911 – May 9, 1976) was an American blues guitarist, mandolin player, and singer. He was a practitioner of the Piedmont blues, which was popular in the southeastern United States in the 1920s and 1930s. He was ...
. The following year, after auditioning for
J. Mayo Williams
Jay Mayo "Ink" Williams (September 25, 1894 – January 2, 1980) was a pioneering African-American producer of recorded blues music. Some historians have claimed that Ink Williams earned his nickname by his ability to get the signatures of t ...
, he recorded for
Decca Records, 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. His imprisonment prevented him from performing in "
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, ...
", a concert produced by
John Hammond in New York City that year. Sonny Terry performed in his place; it was the beginning of Terry's long career in folk music. After Fuller was released from prison, he held his last two recording sessions, in New York City in June 1940, but by then he was increasingly physically weak, and much of the material did not match the quality and energy of his earlier recordings.
Fuller's repertoire included a number of popular double-entendre "
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. This trope goes back to early blues recordings and is used from time to time in modern Ameri ...
" songs, such as "I Want Some of Your Pie", "Truckin' My Blues Away" (1936) (the inspiration for
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb (; born August 30, 1943) is an American cartoonist and musician who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contem ...
's "
Keep On Truckin' " comic), and "Get Your Yas Yas Out" (1938)
(adapted as ''
Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out'' for the title of an album by the
Rolling Stones), and the autobiographical "Big House Bound", about his time in prison. Much of his material was culled from traditional folk and blues songs. He possessed a formidable
fingerpicking
Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar or bass guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking (plucking individual notes with a single plectr ...
guitar style. He played a steel National
resonator guitar
A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar that produces sound by conducting string vibrations through the bridge to one or more spun metal cones (resonators), instead of to the guitar's sounding board (top). Resonator guit ...
. He was criticised by some as a derivative musician, but his ability to fuse together elements of traditional and contemporary songs and reformulate them in his own performances attracted a broad audience.
He was an expressive vocalist and a masterful guitar player, best remembered for his up-tempo ragtime hits, including "
Step It Up and Go". At the same time he was capable of deeper material; 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, but most of his songs stayed 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 cystostomy
A suprapubic cystostomy or suprapubic catheter (SPC) (also known as a vesicostomy or epicystostomy) is a surgically created connection between the urinary bladder and the skin used to drain urine from the bladder in individuals with obstruction o ...
in July 1940, probably due to the
urethral stricture
A urethral stricture is a narrowing of the urethra, the tube connected to the bladder that allows the passing of urine. The narrowing reduces the flow of urine and makes it more difficult or even painful to empty the bladder.
Urethral stricture is ...
noted on Fuller's death certificate, a narrowing or blockage of the
urethra
The urethra (from Greek οὐρήθρα – ''ourḗthrā'') is a tube that connects the urinary bladder to the urinary meatus for the removal of urine from the body of both females and males. In human females and other primates, the urethra c ...
which can be caused by
syphilitic chancres, infections from
gonorrhea
Gonorrhea, colloquially known as the clap, is a sexually transmitted infection (STI) caused by the bacterium ''Neisseria gonorrhoeae''. Infection may involve the genitals, mouth, or rectum. Infected men may experience pain or burning with u ...
, or
chlamydia
Chlamydia, or more specifically a chlamydia infection, is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium '' Chlamydia trachomatis''. Most people who are infected have no symptoms. When symptoms do appear they may occur only several we ...
, but continued to require medical treatment. He died at his home in
Durham, North Carolina, on February 13, 1941.
The cause of death was
pyemia
Pyaemia (or pyemia) is a type of sepsis 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 ...
, due to an infected
bladder
The urinary bladder, or simply bladder, is a hollow organ in humans and other vertebrates that stores urine from the kidneys before disposal by urination. In humans the bladder is a distensible organ that sits on the pelvic floor. Urine enters ...
,
gastrointestinal tract and
perineum
The perineum in humans is the space between the anus and scrotum in the male, or between the anus and the vulva in the female. The perineum is the region of the body between the pubic symphysis (pubic arch) and the coccyx (tail bone), includi ...
, plus
kidney
The kidneys are two reddish-brown bean-shaped organs found in vertebrates. They are located on the left and right in the retroperitoneal space, and in adult humans are about in length. They receive blood from the paired renal arteries; blo ...
failure.
He was so popular when he died that his protégé,
Brownie McGhee
Walter Brown "Brownie" McGhee (November 30, 1915 – February 16, 1996) was an American folk music and Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaboration with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.
Life and career
McGhee was ...
, recorded "The Death of Blind Boy Fuller" for
Okeh Records, and then reluctantly began a short-lived career as Blind Boy Fuller No. 2, so that
Columbia Records could profit from the deceased musician's popularity.
Grave location
Fuller's grave is Grove Hill Cemetery, located on private property in Durham. State records indicate that this was once an official cemetery, and Fuller's interment is recorded. Only one headstone remains, that of one Mary Caston Langey. The funeral arrangements were handled by McLaurin Funeral Home of Durham, and the burial took place on February 15, 1941.
Fuller has been recognized with two plaques in Durham. A plaque placed by the North Carolina Division of Archives and History is located a few miles north of Fuller's gravesite, along Fayetteville St. The city of Durham officially recognized Fuller on July 16, 2001, with a commemorative plaque located along the
American Tobacco Trail, adjacent to the property where Fuller's unmarked grave is located (several hundred feet east of Fayetteville St.).
Posthumous recognition
Blind Boy Fuller was, with
Reverend Gary Davis
Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis (born Gary D. Davis, April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972), was a blues and gospel singer who was also proficient on the banjo, guitar and harmonica. Born in Laurens, South Carolina and blind since infan ...
, recognized as one of two Main Honorees by the Sesquicentennial Honors Commission at the Durham 150 Closing Ceremony in Durham, NC on November 2, 2019. The posthumous recognition was bestowed upon them for their contributions to the
Piedmont Blues.
His influence is acknowledged by many rock artists whose styles draw from the blues, including the
Rolling Stones,
Eric Clapton and others.
References
External links
Discography Blind Boy Fuller at Discogs.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fuller, Blind Boy
1900s births
1941 deaths
People from Wadesboro, North Carolina
African-American guitarists
Decca Records artists
Vocalion Records artists
Piedmont blues musicians
East Coast blues musicians
Country blues musicians
Country blues singers
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
Blind musicians
20th-century American guitarists
People from Rockingham, North Carolina
20th-century African-American male singers