Blind Boy Fuller

Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen, July 10, 1907[1]

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.

Life and career

Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina,

United States, to Calvin Allen and Mary Jane Walker. He
was one of a family of 10 children, but after his mothers
death he moved with his father to Rockingham. As a Bull City Blues, Durham, North Carolina
boy he learned to play the guitar and also learned from
older singers the eld hollers, country rags, and traditional
songs and blues popular in poor, rural areas.
Over the next ve years Fuller made over 120 sides, and
He married Cora Allen young and worked as a labourer, his recordings appeared on several labels. His style of
but began to lose his eyesight in his mid-teens. According singing was rough and direct, and his lyrics explicit and
to researcher Bruce Bastin, While he was living in Rock- uninhibited as he drew from every aspect of his expeingham he began to have trouble with his eyes. He went rience as an underprivileged, blind Black person on the
to see a doctor in Charlotte who allegedly told him that streetspawnshops, jailhouses, sickness, deathwith an
he had ulcers behind his eyes, the original damage having honesty that lacked sentimentality. Although he was not
been caused by some form of snow-blindness. Only the sophisticated, his artistry as a folk singer lay in the honrst part of this diagnosis was correct. A 1937 eye exam- esty and integrity of his self-expression. His songs conination attributed his vision loss to the long-term eects tained desire, love, jealousy, disappointment, menace and
humor.[3]
of untreated neonatal conjunctivitis.[2]
By 1928 he was completely blind, and turned to whatever employment he could nd 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 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 rst recordings with Sonny Terry. In
1938 Fuller, who was described as having a ery 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. Fullers last two recording sessions took
place in New York City during 1940.

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.

Fullers 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
1

EXTERNAL LINKS

from traditional folk and blues numbers, he possessed a

formidable nger-picking guitar style. He played a steel
National resonator guitar.[4] 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 Grove Hill Cemetery in Durham, North Carolina
artists to this day.
cemetery, and Fullers 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.[5]
Blind Boy Fuller has been recognized on two dierent
plaques in the City of Durham. The North Carolina Division of Archives and History plaque is located a few
miles north of Fullers gravesite, along Fayetteville St.
in Durham. The City of Durham ocially recognized
Fuller on July 16, 2001, and the commemorating plaque
is located along the American Tobacco Trail, adjacent
to the property where Fullers unmarked grave is located
(several hundred feet east of Fayetteville St.).

Fulton Allens death certicate

4 References
[1] East Coast Piedmont Blues - Blind Boy Fuller

Death

Fuller underwent a suprapubic cystostomy 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
p.m. of pyemia due to an infected bladder, gastrointestinal tract and perineum, plus kidney failure.
He was so popular when he died that his protg 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.

Burial location

Blind Boy Fullers nal resting place is Grove Hill Cemetery, located on private property in Durham, North Carolina. State records indicate that this was once an ocial

[2] Jas Obrecht Music Archive, Blind Boy Fuller: His Life,
Recording Sessions, and Welfare Records"". Retrieved
2013-12-28.
[3] Oliver, Paul (1984). Blues O the Record. New York,
N.Y.: Da Capo Press. pp. 9598. ISBN 0-306-80321-6.
[4] History of National Reso-Phonic Guitars - Part One
[5] Death certicate for Fulton Allen; Durham County
North Carolina Cemeteries: Grove Hill Cemetery, http:
//cemeterycensus.com/nc/durh/cem262.htm

5 External links
Remembering Blind Boy Fuller (interviews with
Boo Hanks, Glenn Hinson, Joe Newberry, and Tim
Duy)
Discography
Blind Boy Fuller at Discogs.com

A plaque commemorating Blind Boy Fuller in Durham, North

Carolina

6 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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Blind Boy Fuller Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Boy_Fuller?oldid=671129962 Contributors: Zoicon5, RedWolf, Drstuey,

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