Introduction: A Voice of the East Coast
East Coast blues, sometimes known as Piedmont blues, is a blues musical style that uses ragtime-based rhythms and fingerpicked guitar. It is generally smoother and more melodic than Delta blues.
Blind Boy Fuller was a prominent figure in the East Coast blues style. His voice and guitar could be heard in the streets and juke joints of the East Coast.
Fuller’s life was short, but his music lived on. Today, his name is still remembered by blues enthusiasts and historians.
In this post, we will discuss his contributions to the Piedmont blues style. We will examine his rise to fame, his music, and the cultural impact of his songs.
Piedmont Blues: The East Coast Sound
Piedmont blues is a subgenre of East Coast blues music. A syncopated, melodic style and complex fingerpicking characterize it. Guitar lines are heavily influenced by ragtime piano. Instead of slide guitar or distorted tones, Piedmont artists use alternating bass and treble melodies.
This subgenre of blues first appeared in the southeastern United States, particularly the Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia. Players would perform on front porches, at dances, and in tobacco warehouses. Piedmont blues was both rural and urbane. It was deeply Southern in its origins, but often lighter and more melodic than Delta blues.
Piedmont blues is different because of its smooth and rolling rhythm. The mood is often more carefree than the Delta style. It swings from playful to hauntingly bittersweet, often within a single song.
Chicago blues is known for its electric guitars, amplified harmonicas, and thumping urban rhythms. Piedmont blues is acoustic-based, clean-toned, and rhythmically intricate. It’s more about the bounce than the bite.
Blind Boy Fuller, Rev. Gary Davis, and Elizabeth Cotten are among the artists who popularized Piedmont blues. These players incorporated folk, blues, and ragtime styles into a uniquely American sound. Every day, stories and narratives with a touch of grit and romance often characterize songs.
You can read about Rev. Gary Davis here
Piedmont blues is less well-known than Delta blues or Chicago blues. However, it still has a place in the pantheon of blues styles. The influence can be heard in folk revivals, early rock and roll, and contemporary acoustic blues. Piedmont-style fingerpicking is still used by guitarists today.
From tobacco-shucking towns to national concert stages, the East Coast blues sound endures. It is subtle, syncopated, and soulful.
Early Life of Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller was born Fulton Allen around 1907 in Wadesboro, North Carolina. Working-class, poor African American parents raised him.
Music was a part of his life from an early age. He heard local porch singers and fish fry musicians playing guitar blues and ragtime.
The fingerpicking styles of the guitar players entranced him.
As a child, he began picking out tunes by ear. The steady groove and storytelling of ragtime blended with blues’s emotive power to shape his musical sensibilities.
In his mid-teens, he became blind, perhaps from neglected medical conditions. His blindness led him to become more deeply involved with music.
Unable to perform manual labor, he devoted himself to his guitar. He played on street corners, in tobacco warehouses, and at house parties.
Blindness gave him a unique focus on the sounds around him and his technique. Over time, he developed a fast, clean, syncopated fingerpicking style that would become a Piedmont blues hallmark.
His early life experiences, street life, and regional influences all contributed to Fuller’s unique sound.
A Recording Star of the 1930s
Blind Boy Fuller’s recording career flourished in the 1930s. He first gained recognition in Durham, North Carolina, a center for Piedmont blues musicians. Fuller’s gritty voice and agile guitar playing caught the attention of talent scouts and promoters in the area.
Through the efforts of J.B. Long, a store owner and music manager, Fuller was able to secure his first professional recording session. Long’s connections to record companies in New York would pave the way for Fuller’s national success.
Fuller’s first recordings in New York took place in 1935. The sessions captured his virtuosic fingerpicking guitar style, as well as his down-to-earth, humorous songwriting. His early recordings were marked by a raspy, urgent voice that spoke to the gritty reality of everyday life.
Record companies saw commercial potential in Fuller’s style. Over the course of the 1930s, he would record more than 120 songs. His records were popular sellers, particularly in the South and among African American audiences.
One of Fuller’s biggest hits was the up-tempo “Step It Up and Go.” The song’s catchy beat and stinging lyrics made it a favorite for dancing. Its lively rhythm and vocal intensity became hallmarks of the Piedmont blues style.
Another standout song was “Truckin’ My Blues Away.” The song was characterized by Fuller’s light touch and playful phrasing. The humorous, slightly surreal quality of the song drew listeners in.
You can listen to “Truckin’ My Blues Away” here
Fuller’s music spoke to the experiences of many people living through the Great Depression. His songs were full of familiar stories of hard work, lost love, and the struggle to keep moving forward. He provided a soundtrack for both dancing and feeling blue.
By the late 1930s, Fuller was one of the most successful blues artists in the country. His recordings brought East Coast blues to a wider audience and helped to popularize the Piedmont style. Although his life was cut short, Fuller’s recordings continue to be widely listened to and admired.
His Guitar Style and Musical Techniques
Blind Boy Fuller’s playing was characterized by its percussive attack and his restless, buoyant bounce. Fuller played with a thumb pick, which he used to drive a relentless, rolling bass.
His alternating bass approach lent all of his songs a forward motion that never let up, even when he was jamming through the fastest lead breaks.
With his right hand, he was constantly at work, his thumb driving the rhythm while his fingers punctuated the spaces with syncopated strokes. That syncopation gave his sound a paradoxical looseness and precision, a relaxed intensity.
Fuller was heavily influenced by another Piedmont bluesman, Reverend Gary Davis, an accomplished fingerpicker whom Fuller had met as an occasional instructor.
Davis’s dense, intricate fingerpicking as well as his gospel-derived phrasing had a profound influence on Fuller.
Davis specialized more in spirituals and instrumentals, while Fuller applied his technical mastery to blues, street songs, and dance tunes.
The result was inventive, earthy, and irrepressibly rhythmic.
Fuller also drew upon ragtime, folk, and even popular music. Songs like “Rag Mama Rag” and “Lonesome Road Blues” evoked the sound of the itinerant medicine show, the barrelhouse, and the bustling street corner.
You can listen to “Rag Mama Rag” here.
The diversity of Fuller’s musical sources lent his playing both color and variety and transformed his performances into something like miniature concerts, with their kaleidoscopic shifts of rhythm and mood.
Fuller’s playing is simultaneously polished and raw. You can hear the intention behind each stroke, the need behind each riff.
Blind Boy Fuller’s guitar work is a large part of what defines Piedmont blues. It was nimble, percussive, and as expressive as a band
Storytelling Through Song
Blues lyrics are steeped in the real world. Songs are tales of work and woe, hunger and highway. They are about everyday life: money and love, long travels and heartaches.
They are stories set to vivid language. Often emotional and straightforward, blues lyrics capture the feeling of a time.
Women, yearning, and heartbreak are common themes. So too are trains, highways, and dusty crossroads. Through these songs, people found a voice.
The blues helped people express themselves. Many blues singers used humor and double entendres to say what they couldn’t speak openly.
Songs provided a release. Laughter hid tears and gave vent to anger and frustration.
Each song is a little history lesson. A blues lyric could reveal more about history than a textbook. Blues songs served as oral history and social documentation, describing what it was like to work in the cotton fields and city alleys or to sit on the back porch.
Listening to the blues, people felt seen. Painful or playful, blues lyrics told truths.
Musical Partnerships and Influence
Blind Boy Fuller rarely performed solo. Harmonica player Sonny Terry and washboard player Bull City Red often accompanied Fuller. Their presence electrified each session.
Sonny Terry’s unhinged whoops and syncopated harmonica matched Fuller’s fingerpicking perfectly. Bull City Red’s washboard playing gave the songs propulsion and groove. The trio became the standard-bearers for Piedmont blues.
This partnership, in turn, inspired Brownie McGhee. Brownie McGhee went on to perform with Sonny Terry for decades, leading to the preservation of East Coast blues traditions. Fuller’s fusion of ragtime, blues, and storytelling would echo on through them.
With his records in the mail-order catalogues and his music on the radio, the East Coast blues sound was spread well beyond the Carolinas. Guitarists across the nation learned and emulated his thumb-picking rhythm and precise slide work. His method provided an alternative to the Delta blues’ denser sound.
Fuller’s music showed that the blues could be bright, fast, and packed with humor. He has also left an indelible influence on modern folk and acoustic blues music. The East Coast blues would not be the same without him.
Legacy and Continued Impact
Blind Boy Fuller’s recorded legacy is a treasure trove. His raspy vocal stylings and intricate fingerpicking techniques are an essential piece of East Coast blues history. Songs such as “Step It Up and Go” remain staples of blues radio and compilation albums.
Fuller’s music enjoyed a resurgence in popularity after his death. Blues enthusiasts and collectors kept his recordings alive on bootlegs and reissues. The emerging blues market eventually led record companies to reissue and compile Fuller’s works, bringing his music to a new audience.
The folk revival of the 1960s introduced Fuller to an even larger audience. Folk artists, including Dave Van Ronk and Bob Dylan, incorporated elements of Fuller’s guitar style and fingerpicking into their music. The revival helped to popularize Piedmont blues on a national scale.
The impact of Fuller’s music has extended to contemporary acoustic blues artists as well. Musicians like Jontavious Willis and Corey Harris continue to play the Piedmont style while infusing it with their unique interpretations. This evolution ensures that the Piedmont sound remains vibrant and not stuck in the past.
Fuller’s contributions to blues music have been recognized and celebrated in various ways. His work is often the subject of blues documentaries, museum exhibits, and academic research. His influence lives on, serving as a touchstone for many who study and perform blues music.
A musician’s legacy is more than the work they leave behind. It’s how their sound finds life in the work of others. Blind Boy Fuller’s guitar playing and songwriting continue to be heard and felt on stages and in headphones around the world.
Conclusion: Fuller’s Place in Blues History
Blind Boy Fuller was a master of the East Coast blues style, known for his nimble fingerpicking and clever, biting lyrics. He infused his music with the grit and wit of street life, earning him a place in the pantheon of blues greats.
Fuller’s unique sound was a blend of blues, ragtime, and folk music. This fusion created an energetic, yet soulful sound that featured his thumb-picked bass lines and complex, syncopated runs.
Beyond his musicianship, Fuller captured the spirit of his era in his songs. He sang about the everyday struggles of ordinary people with a directness and honesty that resonated with listeners.
His influence can be heard in the work of many acoustic blues and folk musicians today. Guitarists in particular continue to study his recordings for their raw energy and technical prowess.
To experience the full impact of Blind Boy Fuller’s music, seek out recordings of classics like “Truckin’ My Blues Away” or “Step It Up and Go.”