By Scott Zuppardo “People say I was born with the blues,” Willie Farmer says. “The blues is in me.”  There’s a loneliness that goes with growing up in the rural South. Willie Farmer has embraced that loneliness for years, but its spell on him is waning. He’s a self-taught auto mechanic who, for most of […]

Music Maker lost a dear friend and partner artist, Sam Frazier Jr., on March 23.  I first heard of Sam when a package arrived at our office in 2015. One of Sam’s nieces had filled a manila envelope with a letter of praise for her favorite uncle, and posters from his music career over the […]

  LIVESTREAM MUSIC SERIES HONORING PIEDMONT BLUESWOMAN ELIZABETH ‘LIBBA’ COTTEN  PERFORMANCES BY AMYTHYST KIAH, JOHNNY RAY DANIELS, THE HAMILTONES, ALEXA ROSE, AND HARVEY DALTON ARNOLD Livestream each concert via the links below: Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/MusicMakerReliefFoundation/live/ YouTube Live: https://bit.ly/2Z1lSRE WUNC, the Town of Carrboro, Music Maker Relief Foundation, Soul Bag, and Artarie will present a livestream […]

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, […]