Cootie Stark (December 27, 1927 – April 14, 2005)
was an American
Piedmont blues
Piedmont blues (also known as East Coast, or Southeastern blues) refers primarily to a guitar style, which is characterized by a fingerpicking approach in which a regular, alternating thumb bass string rhythmic pattern supports a syncopated melo ...
guitarist, singer, and songwriter.
His best remembered
recordings
A record, recording or records may refer to:
An item or collection of data Computing
* Record (computer science), a data structure
** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity
** Boot sector or boot record, r ...
were "Metal Bottoms" and "Sandyland." Stark was known as the "King of the Piedmont Blues."
["Doc Rock" (2011)]
"The Dead Rock Stars Club 2005 January to June"
''Thedeadrockstarsclub.com''. accessed October 18, 2011
Biography
He was born Johnny Miller,
in
Abbeville, South Carolina
Abbeville is a city and county seat of Abbeville County, in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It is located west of Columbia and south of Greenville. Its population was 5,237 at the 2010 census. Settled by French Huguenot settlers, it was ...
,
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, the son of
sharecropper
Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land.
Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range ...
s,
[ and grew up in Anderson County.]Greenville, South Carolina
Greenville (; locally ) is a city in and the seat of Greenville County, South Carolina, United States. With a population of 70,720 at the 2020 census, it is the sixth-largest city in the state. Greenville is located approximately halfway be ...
. His poor eyesight meant that he was unable to find regular employment. He began busking
Street performance or busking is the act of performing in public places for gratuities. In many countries, the rewards are generally in the form of money but other gratuities such as food, drink or gifts may be given. Street performance is pr ...
on street corners, and learned his art from fellow street performers such as Peg Leg Sam
PEG or peg may refer to:
Devices
* Clothes peg, a fastener used to hang up clothes for drying
* Tent peg, a spike driven into the ground for holding a tent to the ground
* Tuning peg, used to hold a string in the pegbox of a stringed instrumen ...
, Pink Anderson
Pinkney "Pink" Anderson (February 12, 1900 – October 12, 1974) was an American blues singer and guitarist.
Life and career
Anderson was born in Laurens, South Carolina, and raised in nearby Greenville and Spartanburg. He joined Dr. William ...
and 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 ...
plus, particularly in his earliest days, from Baby Tate.nickname
A nickname is a substitute for the proper name of a familiar person, place or thing. Commonly used to express affection, a form of endearment, and sometimes amusement, it can also be used to express defamation of character. As a concept, it is ...
, Sugar Man, and continued to work his trade as a songster
A "songster" is a wandering musician, usually but not always African-American, of the type which first appeared in the late 19th century in the southern United States.
Songsters in American culture
The songster tradition both pre-dated and co-exi ...
in the area.[ However, by the 1980s, with playing prospects diminishing, Stark settled in Greenville. "By then, the real Piedmont blues was pretty much gone," he stated. "All them guys were dead and gone and I wasn't making no headway." In 1997, when Stark was over 70 years old, he was heard playing ]Fats Domino
Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017), known as Fats Domino, was an American pianist, singer and songwriter. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Born in New O ...
songs by Tim Duffy, the founder of the Music Maker Relief Foundation.album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...
, ''Sugar Man'', in 1999. In 2003, Stark released his second and final album, ''Raw Sugar'', when he was again accompanied on record by Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal (; ) is an Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1631 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan () to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mu ...
.[
Stark died at the age of 77, in Greenville, in April 2005.]
Discography
Solo albums
Guest appearances
See also
*List of Piedmont blues musicians
The Piedmont blues (also known as Piedmont fingerstyle) is a type of blues music, characterized by a unique fingerpicking method on the guitar in which a regular, alternating-thumb bassline pattern supports a melody using the treble strings. Th ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stark, Cootie
1927 births
2005 deaths
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
American blues singers
Songwriters from South Carolina
Singers from South Carolina
People from Abbeville, South Carolina
Piedmont blues musicians
Songster musicians
20th-century American singers
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from South Carolina
20th-century American male singers
American male songwriters