News
February 24, 2012
We shouldn't be surprised to hear of the death of a 93 year-old man, yet we just can't seem to wrap our heads around a North Carolina without Joe Thompson, who passed away Monday, February 20, 2012. The North Carolina Folklife Institute celebrates the life and talents of this late musician
and national treasure with some reflections, along with images from the archive.
Playing outside at cousin Odell Thompson's house in 1990. Photo by Marshall Wyatt. (You can just see a young Wayne Martin, now Folklife Director at the North Carolina Arts Council, accompanying on guitar.)
Born in December 9, 1918 and raised in
Orange County, North Carolina, Thompson picked up a love
for fiddling from his father, John Arch Thompson. His experience and repertoire connected us to the
frolic tradition of black square-dance music that extended back to before the
Civil War.As a young man, Thompson and his family played at house parties, square dances, and corn shuckings, for both black
and white audiences. "You can't know what it meant to me to be a young man going all over Orange and Alamance counties with my music. People loved to see us come. Every year we would shuck corn and strip tobacco, then hoop it up with a big dance. Christmastime, we'd play every night."1
Joe recalled standing in the traditional position in the doorway connecting rooms of dancing couples. "We were playing [four- and eight-hand square dance] sets - I was only seven years old. We had straight chairs and my feet couldn't touch the floor. And we were running them folks, man."2
Thompson’s playing was often described as inspirational,
vital, and vigorous. Keith Sumner wrote about Thompson: “There is nothing pretty or slick about his
playing - it is dance music pure and simple.”3 However, while the notes may have
been simple, his ability to drive the emotion and pace of a dance, or to build
a synergy with other players, was unmatched.
In the 1970s, Joe Thompson and his cousin Odell
Thompson, who played banjo, benefitted from a resurgence of interest in African
American folk music and stringband music, playing at many festivals and touring
together for years, this time for predominately white audiences.
Joe Thompson and his cousin, Odell Thompson, playing at the National Black Arts Festival, Atlanta, GA, in 1990. Photo by Lesley Williams.
In addition to the National Black Arts Festival and Tennessee Banjo Institute sessions pictured here, the Thompson cousins also appeared at the National Folk Festival in Lowell, MA, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in WA, and at New York's Carnegie Hall. "I've been everywhere playing this fiddle," Joe Thompson said at 89, "all up the line" - even to Australia.1
Odell Thompson (L) on banjo and Joe Thompson on fiddle play with attendees of the Tennessee Banjo Institute, Labanon, TN, 1990. Photo by Lesley Williams.
In 1989, George Holt --the North Carolina Folklife Institute's founder and then director of the Folklife Section of the North Carolina Arts Council--helped to start the North Carolina Folk Heritage Awards to honor the achievements of the state's most accomplished traditional artists. In 1991, Joe and Odell Thompson were honored with the North Carolina Folk
Heritage Award. Their "dynamic instrumental styles and soaring vocals" brought attention to the rich tradition of southern African American stringband music.2
In 2007, after Odell Thompson’s death, Joe
Thompson also received the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for
the Arts for “sustaining and extending our traditional arts heritage.”
Sustaining the past and extending that heritage to the
future – never has there been a better example of this accomplishment than in
the career of Joe Thompson. In 2005, he attended the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, North
Carolina as a revered elder, which resulted in a new
generation of young African American musicians having exposure to his
influence. Three of these young people would go on to form the Grammy-winning
band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
The Chocolate Drops' founders came from different backgrounds and had different levels of awareness of Joe Thompson before the Gathering -- from being excited about meeting him to being completely unaware of his legacy. But afterwards, regular picking sessions with Thompson brought their own band and sound together, and established him firmly as their mentor. The Chocolate Drops have gone on to be the first black stringband to play at the Grand Ole Opry; in 2011 they won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album for their release, Genuine Negro Jig. Rolling Stone appropriately describes them as revisiting black stringband music with "a joyful vengeance."
So often, our rich wealth of folklife is mischaracterized as fleeting remnants of a dying past, that we should try to "capture" in recordings or transcripts before it is lost to the ages. In Joe Thompson's career we see instead the clear power of traditional expressive culture, that it is not just a bridge to the realm of history, but to the future as well.
Although he was best known as one of the most
historically important traditional performers in North Carolina, Joe Thompson had much to
teach us also as a veteran of World War II, veteran of the segregated South, dedicated
family man, and tutor of future generations. We hope that folks will continue to learn about his past, and to continue his legacy for years to come.If you haven't had the chance to know Thompson's music, his Rounder release Family Traditions, put out in honor of his 80th birthday, is a great way to start. On it you can hear the restless energy, and distinctive short bow action, that so characterized Thompson's playing. (If you already know Thompson's work, you might be interested in some of the other traditional music you can find at our gift shop.)
--Joy M. Salyers.
1 Quoted in Kirsten Mullen's article "Passing It On," American Legacy Magazine, 2008
2 Quoted in North Carolina Folk Heritage Award Program, 1991
3 Review of CD Family Tradition by Keith Sumner.
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