Piedmont blues artist. Born in Wadesboro, North Carolina, in 1908, Fuller learned guitar
as a teenager. By 1935 he had mastered the techniques of the Piedmont tradition, a blues
style associated with the Carolinas and Virginia. Solo or working with Gary Davis,
Sonny Terry, or washboard player Bull City Red, Fuller recorded a substantial body of
work over a six-year span. He was one of the most recorded artists of his time and by far
the most popular and influential Piedmont blues player of all time.
Initially discovered and promoted by Carolina entrepreneur H.B.Long, Fuller recorded
for ARC, Decca, Vocalian, Okeh, and Columbia. He also served as a conduit to recording
sessions, steering fellow blues musicians to the studio. In spite of his recorded output,
most of his musical life was spent as a street and house-party musician. Adept at various
guitar styles, he could reinterpret or cover other artists’ hits. In this sense, he was a
synthesizer of styles, parallel to Robert Johnson, his contemporary. Like Johnson, Fuller
lived fast and died young.
Fuller was a fine expressive vocalist and a masterful guitar player best remembered for
his uptempo ragtime hits “Rag Mama Rag,” “Trucking My Blues Away,” and “Step It up
and Go.” At the same time, he was capable of deeper material, as evidenced by his
versions of “Lost Lover Blues” and “Mamie.” Because of his popularity, he may have
been overexposed on records, yet the majority of his songs stayed close to tradition, and
his repertoire and style are kept alive by North Carolina and Virginia artists.
Barry Lee Pearson
References
Bastin, Bruce. 1986. Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.