Life and Times of Joe Thompson transcipt
- [Narrator] It has been said, that the world is made up of stories, not atoms. The primordial desire to witness to each other's lives, carries both personal and social significance. It is important to leave some record of our being here.
- [Narrator] Joseph Aquiler Thompson was born December 9th, 1918. A product of the Piedmont, he's the last known African-American fiddle player in North Carolina. As a self-taught musician, he fiddled his way into the hearts of people, around the world.
- Well, I have walked up to people, and tuned up while they were playing, and played with them, and when I get through, I would be in the same tune. It come from the ear.
- I'm going to tell you about playing music. I used to be out in the field working somewhere maybe, somewhere on the tractor wagon or doing something. I had thought about a song I wanted to play. When that song come to me, we out in the field. Well you see now, it didn't come to me while I had the fiddle in my hand. Then I come on to the house and pick it up and just go to play it. But you see, it's gotta be in, it's got to be in, in you know, you got to want to do it.
- This thing comes from, our grand daddy started and then, my dad, and, it come from 1700s all the way down to here.
- [Narrator] The details take different forms for each of us but the questions are always the same. Who am I? Why am I here? How should I live? Joe Thompson's music addresses those issues, by building community across generations, races, and cultures.
- [Narrator] Joe was practically born with a fiddle in his hands. He internalized the tunes his fathers and uncles played. And at five years old, his mother got him a fiddle from one of her cousins. The fact that it had no strings, didn't stop Joe from playing.
- I did what I saw my brother do, Shetland, Odell, and Lace and all of them grown big boys. They pulled string out of that screen door. They put on the guitar and the banjos and things so they could play. So I pulled me two strings out of that screen door and put it on my fiddle.
- That same night, he mesmerized his family by playing hooking line.
- You get a line and I get a pole, meet me at the crawdad hole.
- About the first tune that I had ever played. ♪ Give me the hook and give me the line ♪ ♪ You get a pole, you get a line ♪ ♪ Meet me at the crawdad hole ♪
- [Narrator] It wasn't by happenstance that Joe became a great fiddle player. Strict discipline and raw talent are everywhere evident in the Thompson family. Joe's grandparents, Bob and Kate, had eleven boys and one girl. Most of the boys played a string band instrument. They were required to practice until they got it right. Joe's dad, John Arch, did the same for his sons, Joe and Nathaniel.
- He'd take this hand up, so it couldn't play no music. That's what he did to me. And he'd just sit there, claw hammer, for two weeks. Claw hammer for two weeks. But when he took that leg off of that, everything off, man. We would go.
- [Narrator] The music survives today solely through John Arch's lineage, his son, Joe. Joe and Nathaniel played with their father and uncles, Jake and Walter, from the 1920s to the early 40's.
- We had a We'd have a dance that night. Sometimes whoever have a Somebody would have a dance. And then in Christmas time we'd have a dance every, just about every night in the Christmas.
- My dad played the banjo for the square dances, but I wasn't allowed, My momma didn't believe in square dancing. She didn't believe in dancing. So I didn't dance when I was young, but she would let me go and look. They'd have somebody to call a dancing. And then have certain figures, and it would be pretty.
- [Narrator] Joe recalls that as a young boy, people pushed the furniture out of the living room and the adjoining room. He and his dad played in the doorway between the two rooms in order to accommodate all the dancers.
- We've stayed pretty busy down till time to go to war.
- When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the music stopped for Joe, but John Arch and his brothers kept the tradition going. Joe left for World War II in 1942. He was assigned to the sixty first engineer battalion in Tampa, Florida. Overseas, he served as a heavy equipment operator and drove the D7 Caterpillar to construct pontoon bridges when soldiers had no way of getting across large bodies of water. Joe and his war buddy, Jasper Slade, returned from the war on Thanksgiving day in 1945. Joe soon discovered, however, that the interest in string band music was waning.
- After World War II, with the rise of independent record companies, there were many more opportunities for black Americans to play emerging, popular black music, particularly rhythm and blues. The independent record companies, the emergence of rhythm and blues, the emergence of black oriented radio stations, are all factors that lead up to the development of rock and roll and the movement away from that kind of entertainment.
- [Narrator] It wouldn't be until the 1970s that Joe would play again, and this time he would play with his first cousin, Odell, Walter's son. Together, they would become the new string band duo replacing their fathers.
-{Kip Lorrell] I remember knocking on Odell's door and he was kind of quizzical about why, what I was doing. He was, he was warm as he always was, but he was wondering what is this white guy with a beard, you know, college students from Greensboro interested in this old music I played, but you know, he invited me in. And then the next time I came around, which was a, you know, within a couple of weeks, he'd gotten a hold of Joe and explained to him what I was doing, and they were quite amenable. And that's actually how I met them, Was just out checking around, out doing field work. And that was the fall of 1973.
- [Narrator] Kip awoke the sleeping giants, had them shake the dust off of their fiddle and banjo to recreate the Thompson music for a new generation. Joe and Odell played in nearly every state in the country. Their greatest memories were at the American fiddle tune festivals; the Smithsonian Institute; Sydney, Australia; and Carnegie Hall. Before leaving for New York, Joe's banker talked with him about his trip.
- Well you tell me where y'all going to play next. I said we got to go to New York. He said, New York? I said, yeah. Where at y'all going to New York? I said, Carnegie Hall. And he said, Carnegie Hall?! And I said to myself, what's the matter with Carnegie Hall? I didn't know nothing about no Carnegie hall, but all I know is a hall like any other hall. That's what I was thinking. But I found out different. But then he said too, I don't think you quite know what you're running into now. Maybe I better lift you up here a little bit. I said okay. He said Carnegie Hall is the big apple. That's what he said, and he was making me see something, you know, He said, that's the world's best. I don't care where you go, Carnegie hall is at the top. And he said, now I want to tell you something now. If you go in Carnegie hall and play and make a hit, you'll be a celebrity. You'll have to be. You can't be nothing but a celebrity. And I said, well Odell, whenever you meet a crowd like this, the best thing you can do for this crowd now, is to find the hardest thing you've got and to throw it out there at them. We got this tune you call Black Eddie We worked out, it was fine. So we played this Black Eddy two minutes long.
- [Narrator] At the height of their revival period, Joe experienced a devastating blow; the loss of Odell. I said to the Lord that night and I said, why did this, Why is all this here going on with me? Nobody but me way up here with him. High as this, What is, I'm going to have to tell the folks I said, you have to give me something to tell them. And, he made it plain, he made it, spoke to him, and I said, I didn't hear no voice, but he said, I had to separate you two. That's what come into my mind. And that thing followed me for a while. I had to separate you two, because he didn't want me then. He got the one he was out as he wanted.
- [Narrator] So I was around Joe, you know, for six or seven years, eight years, whatever, after 'Dell passed.
- That's the, that's the boy. Him and so many other folks was willing to help me keep moving on. That's how I kept, like I did. Everybody wants to, want to help me play. And everybody was always ready, you know. They just kept me busy, you know. A lot of time I probably wouldn't have went, but they wanted to go. And so we just got started. And so we never stopped going.
- He needed somebody who could follow him and who could do it. And, and I mean, there are other people who could do it too, but I was one of them who could sit there and brush down and brush up and brush down and have him, And have him see his brother, Nate sitting there, and they're five and seven years old again. And they're sitting there with their feet off the floor and playing for that dance. And, you know, in addition to the other things that I could do for him that he needed or wanted someone to do as far as dealing with all those details and getting him to places.
- [Narrator] By the 1940s, not only had Joe preserved another generation of the Thompson's music, but both he and the music were crossing racial lines long before the Civil Rights Act. Folklorist, Kip Lornell, said that three factors helped to integrate America: Elvis Presley, Motown, and rural america. String band music was rural America.
- Most people would assume that, you know, black fiddle and banjo playing had remained only in the black community, which was largely true, but there was a surprising amount of interaction on a social and economic level between blacks and whites in Cedar Grove that I had not really anticipated. That was a bit of a surprise to me. And having Joe and Odell and others recount their experiences became pretty clear that that social interaction was an integral part of daily life in that part of North Carolina during the 1930s and 40's. The percentage of blacks and whites in Cedar Grove was not that different. The per capita income of most blacks and whites was fairly similar. So in a lot of ways, these folks were thrown in a rural area where segregation clearly existed, but their daily lives were intertwined because they weren't that much different. According to Joe, when farmers were getting up around three or four in the morning to prime tobacco, you could hear nothing, but the birds, John Arch and Joe Fletcher, his landlord, going at it on the fiddle and banjo.
[Cece Conway]- It was interesting that, that the music crossed racial borders even back in Jim Crow, times around the tobacco barns and other places where, where blacks and whites would play together. And I believe I've heard Joe say that John Arch and them played for dances sometimes as often as six nights a week; three nights for whites and three nights for blacks
- The quality of the music and the musicians was paramount to race. If you had a good banjo player who happened to be black and some of his neighbors wanted to play music with him, that was not considered a such an odd thing, just because of the nature of the dynamics within the community itself.
- We had a neighbor in the neighborhood, his name was Gene McCullough. He was a white fellow and he stayed across there about a half a mile, but he was saying this particular song every day, especially if it's a beautiful sunshine today. He would get out there singing his song "But I Shall Not Be Moved," and I thought he could sing it so well. I just listened at him every day. Since that time, I often thought about it and tried to sing it. ♪ I shall not be moved ♪ ♪ I shall not be moved ♪ ♪ Like a tree planted by the water ♪ ♪ I shall not be moved ♪
- String band musicians like Joe Thompson didn't judge life by color, but by what was right and just. As a worker for 38 years at White's factory, then the largest furniture company in the South, Joe looked out for the boss's young son, when many would have seen him fail.
- The young man, the gentleman I was working for, of course he knew that my dad was director manufacturer. You know, he's the big boss there, so to speak. And so they were going to see what they could do with the big boss's son. And he was going to show him up right quick. And he did. I had lumber falling all over my feet, coming through that saw. And a young man named Joe Thompson was over beside me working on another saw, and he saw that happening, and his cousin saw it happening too. And they decided very quick that they were going to do something about that. And I want you to know that that lumber falling on my feet, two days later, I was in the same rhythm as Joe and his cousin were. They had taught me that quick, and had gotten the respect of everybody in that department as a result of that. And I never will forget that because Joe became a lifelong friend.
- My daddy, my uncle Walter, got in bad shape. My daddy was in good shape. My daddy moved from his place to hold Uncle Walter. And both of them fell. So that threw my daddy off track too.
- A white farmer got both of their farms, and Joe always felt that he should have allowed them more time to pay the debt.
- Even though that incident was, was something that was burned into his, his mind and heart, he had put that behind him, and he realized that this was, that playing his music and sharing his music, that was something that, that was greater than that. And that told me a lot about him.
- [Narrator] From a three hundred year old legacy that reaches back to Africa, the Thompsons have made many contributions to the string band music genre.
- Playing the fiddle is a black tradition. History of violin playing among Blacks in the United States was not so much because they came in contact with Europeans, but this was a tradition that was being maintained from Africa.
- Initially that Gourd banjo with the short thumb string was an African instrument that was brought here in the minds or hands of the people who first came and were here by the 1740's. And there are no records of white banjo players and probably until about the 1830s.
- So we have something here that's not just about our day and time, but we have something about the day in time of so many people who came before. So, that's what I think is very special about Joe and Odell. The fact they've maintained aspects of so many different cultures, not only black culture, but a shared culture of blacks and whites that was probably important here from very, very long time ago.
- Of the three black banjo players whom I knew the best, Odell was the only one who played with a fiddle player. And so I think the other two were holding onto an older solo tradition, but it happened that the Thompsons had both the solo banjo and the fiddle banjo tradition in their family history.
- A lot of people played better than we played, we don't play all that good. But we played a type of music nobody else played. And everybody while we go, last I knew, they want to learn.
- Today, people sit and listen to string band music, but in its heyday, square dancing was an equal partner for the music. One didn't exist without the other.
- The Thompsons could call for a sixteen hand set, and the dance could go on for as long as thirty minutes before stopping.
- The music, the calling, and the dancing made up an emotional climax for everyone who attended.
- Before they would play, about when you're tuning up, a typical thing to do is, you know, you tune the strings and as you get closer to the point where you think you're in tune, you start, just, I guess you'd call them, modern musicians call them running the scales. We were doing that one day, and, and, you know, Joe, I noticed that every time he did it, he, he played, well the third note of the scale, he flattened it. Unlike a lot of the white musicians that I played with. And then of course, a lot of the tunes that they play, that note is flattened, and a lot of people think of that as sort of a characteristic of blues. But in fact, it's probably, you know, it's older than blues.
- A distinguishing characteristic and Joe's music is the unique shuffling of the bow. It's in an egg beating fashion. Joe has always held onto the string band music tradition, when many of his peers turned to blues
- I think it'd be wrong just to think of Joe as a fiddler, and Odell as a banjo player, because they were both fantastic singers.
- [Narrator] Their contribution, said a local artist, goes beyond their music. Joe and Odell gave the world a complete experience. Not just playing a tune, but added layers, verses, and stories, so that you get a sense of the whole community. The music was the medium through which people get a real sense of what it means to be part of a family, and a culture, and a heritage.
- Finding my music has been a life on top
- of having all my whole life
- [Narrator] Joe has celebrated his 85th birthday. And though recovering from a stroke, he is still performing. He's a steel-driving man.
- Joe has given himself and his music to the world. And because of who he is, he will continue to share his music and teach others until he finds that generation to whom he can pass his bow.
