We first made Essie Mae Brooks’ acquaintance in 1995, when she was 66 years old. Today, at age 92, she’s still singing the gospel and writing her own songs.  When we established the Music Maker Foundation back in 1994, our first group of partner artists was made up largely of blues players from the area […]

It overjoys all of us at Music Maker to wish our partner artist David Bryant a happy 62nd birthday.  David’s roots in the blues run deep. His grandfather, Curley Weaver, was a great Piedmont-style blues guitarist who did his first recordings for Columbia Records almost a century ago, in 1928. His mother, Cora Mae Bryant, […]

In late February, Music Maker was pleased to welcome back Brittany Anderson as our social worker. Brittany had previously served in that position for us from April 2018 through December 2019. Brittany has been at work for about six weeks now, busy reaching out to all our partner artists, surveying them, and learning everything she […]

When you met Algia Mae Hinton, the first thing you would notice was her hands. They were weathered hands, hands that had picked a million cucumbers. They were a farm laborer’s hands, and they produced the money she needed to raise seven children as a single mother in Johnston County, North Carolina, about 30 miles […]

The music of Etta Baker first put its hooks in me when I was a hockey-playing, 15-year-old suburban kid in Connecticut. One of my friend’s older brothers had a massive folk music collection. We would mine it for treasures. One day we found a very rare compilation called “Music From the Hills of Caldwell County.” […]