During the 1920s through the 1940s, Durham, North Carolina—known proudly as the Bull City—was one of the most vibrant centers of African American blues music in the South.
In the tobacco town, African American musicians crafted a distinctive regional sound that would come to be known as the Piedmont blues, a syncopated, ragtime-inflected style that reflected both the struggles and the spirit of Black life in the Carolinas.
At the heart of Durham’s blues scene stood the city’s Hayti community, a thriving Black business and cultural district located just south of downtown. Nearby tobacco warehouses provided steady work for many African Americans, even through the Great Depression. These factories also brought together a large, stable working-class audience.
Steady jobs, spare change, and a lively community created fertile ground for a music scene. From barbershops to street corners, from back-room cafes to tobacco warehouses, Durham’s Black neighborhoods pulsed with music. Fall tobacco harvests and auctions were especially vibrant times, drawing musicians from across the region…