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Blind Boy Fuller’s Piedmont Blues Revolution in Durham
Durham’s tobacco warehouses gave birth to a sound that changed American music forever. In the 1920s, rural Black workers flocked to the city for jobs that paid far more than sharecropping.
Tobacco auctions drew farmers with cash-filled pockets, and street musicians soon followed.
Blind Boy Fuller arrived in 1929, playing his steel guitar outside warehouses while Reverend Gary Davis taught him new tricks. Their finger-picking style created a bouncy, ragtime-influenced sound unlike anything else…