Boom Boom! The Music of John Lee Hooker

The Southern Folklife Collection and the University Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are happy to invite you to a virtual event featuring performances and discussion celebrating the life of iconic Mississippi blues man John Lee Hooker.  Please join us Thursday, November 4 at 7pm Eastern.  Register for this free, live event here: go.unc.edu/JohnLeeHooker

The program will feature performances by Grammy Award winners Bobby Rush and Alvin Youngblood Hart, followed by Rush and Hart in conversation with Wayne Goins, Distinguished Professor of Music and director of jazz studies at Kansas State University. Goins is author of the liner notes to Ace Records box set “John Lee Hooker: Documenting the Sensation Recordings 1948-1952.

The Southern Folklife Collection is proud to hold a number of collections that document the life and work of John Lee Hooker, including audio and video recordings, interviews, and photographs.

The Rosebud Agency Collection , founded by Mike Kappus in 1976, represented Hooker for the latter part of his career, and includes a range of items from correspondence, publicity and promotional materials, as well as audio and video recordings.

The Stefan Grossman Collection has a number of Hooker highlights, from early to late career.  Check out this video of Hooker performing in 1960, from the “John Lee Hooker – Rare Performances 1960-1984” DVD, followed by an early 90s duet with Bonnie Raitt on “I’m In The Mood,” from the DVD “John Lee Hooker & Friends 1984-1992,” on Grossman’s Vestapol label.

For another side of Hooker, explore the Jas Obrecht Collection, among which are a number of interviews the former Guitar World editor conducted with the Blues legend.

Many thanks to the Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation for their support.  We hope to see you Thursday, November 4th at 7PM Eastern, for what promises to be an informative and inspiring program.

go.unc.edu/JohnLeeHooker

John Lee Hooker: Performing in studio. Photo by Riverside Records. John Edwards Memorial Foundation Collection (#20001)
This event is the second in the Southern Folklife Collection’s two-part Folk Legacy Series celebrating great legacies in American vernacular music.  The series is sponsored through generous support from the Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation. The first event, Won’t You Come and Sing for Me? The Music of Hazel and Alice, was October 14, 2021, which you can rewatch here: Won’t You Come and Sing for Me? The Music of Hazel and Alice

When I’m Gone: Remembering Folk Icon Elizabeth Cotten

 

The Southern Folklife Collection and the University Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are happy to invite you to an evening of stories and music celebrating the life of legendary North Carolina musician Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten.  Please join us Thursday, November 12 at 7pm.  Register for this free, live event here: go.unc.edu/ElizabethCotten

Elizabeth Cotten and children (PF-20009/17). Photo by Mike Seeger. Ca. 1957 in the Mike Seeger Collection #20009, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This hour-long virtual program will feature guitarist Yasmin Williams, musician and scholar Alice Gerrard, and Cotten’s great-grandson John W. Evans Jr., who is pictured above as a young boy listening to Cotten.

The SFC is proud to hold a number of collections related to the work of Cotten, including Alice Gerrard’s own collection (https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/20006/).

Elizabeth Cotten, Live! | FC-17741 in the Southern Folklife Collection

Many live concert recordings are held in the McCabe’s Guitar Shop Collection (https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/20511/), which also includes a video interview, from around 1984, of Cotten and some of her family.  The Grammy-award winning Elizabeth Cotten, Live! recording (pictured above), a sampler of live performances from Cotten in her 80s, includes selections from sets recorded at McCabe’s and preserved in the collection.

The Stefan Grossman Collection (https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/20578/), picked up in December 2019, also offers some classic Cotten material through his Vestapol label, a deep source of a variety of video recordings of jazz, blues, country, and folk artists.

Perhaps the richest source of Cotten material is held in the Mike Seeger Collection (https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/20009/).  It was while in employment as a housekeeper for the Seeger family that Cotten picked up a guitar again after a period of musical inactivity, and Mike Seeger’s reel-to-reel recordings of her playing propelled her to becoming a popular figure on the folk circuit, and a touring and performing career that lasted into her 90s.

Elizabeth Cotten and Mike Seeger (PF-20009/22). In the Mike Seeger Collection #20009, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Many thanks to a generous grant from the Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation for making this event possible.

And if you ever find yourself down our way in Elizabeth Cotten’s hometown, check out this recently installed mural by North Carolina artist Scott Nurkin, near the Chapel Hill/Carrboro border, as part of the Musician Murals Project.