2011 FACULTY
Scroll down for bios and photos.
Corey Harris, Artistic Director
GUITAR
Guy Davis
Nat Reese
Jerron Paxton
John Miller
Jeff Scott
Orville Johnson (slide)
Pura Fe (lap slide)
Mark Puryear
UKE
Lightnin' Wells
GUITAR AND BANJO
Otis Taylor
Cheick Hamala Diabate
HARMONICA
Phil Wiggins
Jay Summerour
Mark Graham
ACCORDION
Sunpie Barnes
PIANO
Erwin Helfer
Judy LaPrade
Arthur Migliazza
BASS
William Salter
BANJO
Norris Bennet
BANJO, PERCUSSION, DANCE, JUG BAND
Sule Greg Wilson
MANDOLIN
Lauren Sheehan
FIDDLE
Henrique Prince
WASHBOARD/PERCUSSION
Chaz Leary
Newman Baker
BLUES SINGING
Gloria Gassaway
GOSPEL CHOIR
Vera Long
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Guy Davis is a musician, composer, actor, director, and writer, but most importantly, Guy Davis is a bluesman. Guy has dedicated himself to reviving the traditions of acoustic blues and bringing them to as many ears as possible through the material of the great blues masters, African American stories, and his own original songs, stories and performance pieces.
Raised in the New York City area, Guy grew up hearing accounts of life in the rural south from his parents and especially his grandparents, and they made their way into his own stories and songs. Davis taught himself to play the guitar, “I’ve had about five, maybe six formal lessons in my life.”
Guy’s passion for this music is rooted in the stories and music of his family. It is his storytelling set in an acoustic blues framework that sets him apart from his contemporaries.
Los Angeles-based Jerron Paxton plays guitar, banjo, piano, harmonica, and washboard. While there are few young African American musicians learning country blues in the communities from which it arose, there is a definite increase in younger black musicians learning and playing blues in much the same way that young white people did forty years ago - by listening to recordings and personally experimenting on their instrument.
Jerron Paxton is a supreme example of this, a young man from Watts with a huge repertoire of prewar blues and rags, and an uncanny ability to channel the spirit of pre-war guitar and piano blues music.
Nathaniel H. ‘‘Nat’’ Reese was born March 4, 1924, in Salem, Virginia. When he was four, Reese’s family moved to Itmann, Wyoming County, where coal jobs were plentiful. In 1935, the family moved to Princeton where Reese heard a rich musical mix from big-name jazz musicians, local black musicians, and performers on such radio broadcasts as the Grand Ole Opry. He learned to play instruments, including guitar, piano, organ, bass, and string harp.
Reese worked in the coal mines after classes at Genoa High School. For two years, he played jazz and blues on Bill Farmer’s Saturday night show on radio station WHIS Bluefield. He attended Bluefield State College for two years, then left to serve in the U.S. Army during World War II. During and after his college years, he was part of a dance band that played jazz, polkas, and blues throughout the southern coalfields.
In the early 1950s, Reese moved to Michigan and worked in construction, returning to West Virginia in 1959 to work for the State Road Commission. In 1962, he was hired as a photographic silkscreen printer at Rockwell International’s aviation plant in Princeton, where he stayed for 13 years.
Reese, who lives in Princeton, plays and teaches at the annual Augusta Heritage Arts Workshops at Davis & Elkins College, and continues to perform regularly. His recordings include ‘‘Just a Dream’’ and ‘‘West Virginia Blues by the West Virginia Blues Man.’’ Among his honors are the 1988 John Henry Award and the 1995 Vandalia Award. He was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2009.
Based out of New York, the Ebony Hillbillies includes Henrique Prince - fiddle, Norris Bennett - banjo, Newman Baker - washboard and percussion, and William Salter – bass and Gloria Gassaway – vocals.
In Southern states in the 19th century up to the ’20s and ’30s, it wasn’t uncommon to hear a hoedown coming from a black man’s fiddle. At the time, music was an interracial affair. White and black musicians seldom played together, but they did share repertoires and traditions—Cajun waltzes, Appalachian murder ballads and the blues. New York’s Ebony Hillbillies, a string band composed entirely of African Americans, diversifies the foot-stompin’, fiddle-sawin’ archaic country music typically dominated by white players. The 19th century string band sound produced by a core of fiddle, banjo and guitar was a key element in the genesis of blues music, and seeing black musicians reclaim the sound that was once theirs is refreshing. They provide a great introduction to a largely forgotten African American cultural legacy.
Like many New York performers, the Hillbillies can be found doing their thing for tips in subway stations. Henrique Prince, the lead Billie, hails from a family of musicians from St. Thomas, growing up around all kinds of music, from instrumental dance to traditional Caribbean, Hawaiian and country styles. In his preteens, he taught himself to shuffle on the violin, his favorite instrument. His thoughts on the African roots of old-time music: “Africans, particularly West Africans, have had string bands for centuries—the ekonting, is the banjo’s ancestor. The ekonting players were said to have been captured and made to perform on the decks of slave ships to allow the (enslaved Africans) to get enough exercise to survive the Middle Passage. Left off in America, those players became the first black fiddlers and made the earliest gourd banjos. Somewhere in the mountains of Appalachia, knowledge of the banjo got transferred to other groups.”
Guitarist John Miller is a player with long experience in country blues and a well-earned reputation that extends far beyond blues music.
John’s workshops and performances are tremendously popular, and he remains one of the most highly respected musicians and composers in the Northwest. From a deep and pure musical well, he draws succulent slow blues, refreshing original compositions, and plenty of surprises.
With Otis Taylor, it's best to expect the unexpected. While his music, an amalgamation of roots styles in their rawest form, discusses heavyweight issues like murder, homelessness, tyranny, and injustice, his personal style is lighthearted. "I'm good at dark, but I'm not a particularly unhappy person," he says.
Otis grew up in Denver, Colorado. One of young Otis' favorite neighborhood hang-outs was the Denver Folklore Center. He bought his first instrument there, a used ukulele. The Folklore Center was also the place where he first heard Mississippi John Hurt and country blues. He learned to play guitar and harmonica and by his mid-teens, he formed his first groups, the Butterscotch Fire Department Blues Band and later the Otis Taylor Blues Band.
After playing in several bands and on his own, Otis decided to leave music behind in 1976. After a long hiatus, Taylor returned to music in 1995. During the 2000s, Taylor has released a slew of well-received albums. Otis Taylor's sound is a unique and potent hybrid of Delta-inspired country-blues and traditional folk and mountain music. He is also a self-described practitioner of ‘trance blues’.
Otis plays guitar, banjo, mandolin, and harmonica.
Cheick Hamala Diabate embodies Mali Beat without borders as a West African historian in the Griot tradition and world –recognized master of the ngoni, a Malian traditional instrument. His performances have been featured at such notable venues as The Smithsonian Institute, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest and many of the top festivals across the US. A steward of the 800 year-old tradition of the Griot, the storytellers of West Africa, Cheick Hamala shares the oral history, music and song of his culture as it was passed on to him from birth by parent to child.
At an early age, Cheick Hamala easily mastered the ngoni, a stringed lute and ancestor to the banjo. He later learned to play the guitar from his uncle, legendary Super Rail Band guitarist Djelimady Tounkara. Upon coming to the US, Cheick Hamala was intrigued by the resemblance between his beloved ngoni and the American banjo, even sharing tunings and picking styles. He has since learned to play the banjo at a virtuosic level, including collaborations with Bela Fleck and Bob Carlin. Cheick’s album of banjo duets with Carlin, From Mali to America, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2007 for Best Traditional World Music Album.
Jeffrey Scott is a Piedmont Blues musician from Culpeper, Virginia, and nephew of the late, legendary blues artist John Jackson. He has been a featured performer at many events and festivals, including the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the Kennedy Center, and the D.C. Blues Society Festival.
Accompanying his vocals with Piedmont-style guitar and old-time banjo playing, Scott draws on the musical sources and community heritage of the Blue Ridge Mountains region, as well as many of the songs, stories, and sayings of his famous uncle. The music he plays ranges from blues to gospel to country dance tunes. Jeff makes his second visit to Port Townsend.
Orville Johnson is an instrumental gunslinger whom the Seattle Times describes as "the player's player," has a gift of finding the secret ingredient that makes a song sound letter-perfect, whether it's an R & B tune from New Orleans, a country blues or a jazzy ballad.
Born in Illinois, he came up in the St. Louis music scene where he was exposed to and participated in a variety of blues, bluegrass and American roots music. He moved to Seattle in 1978, where he was a founding member of the much-loved and well-remembered folk/rock group, the Dynamic Logs. Other musical associates include Laura Love, Ranch Romance, and the File' Gumbo Zydeco Band, and he has shared the stage with artists such as Doc Watson, Bonnie Raitt and John Lee Hooker.
Orville's guitar, dobro, and quavering, honeyed vocals have seasoned more than a hundred recordings, soundtracks and countless TV and radio commercials. He’s an extraordinary and magnificent musician, with interests and passions and contributions simply too wide to be categorized by marketing bins.
Pura Fé plays acoustic lap slide guitar. Her soulful voice and acoustic lap steel carry the ancestral message of the ‘Indigenous World’ and the missing history that unified and separated the blood ties of Black and Indian people of the South. Pura Fé resurrects the Indigenous (native american) influence on the birth of the Blues.
Pura Fé is a founding member of the internationally renowned native woman’s a capella trio, Ulali, and is recognized for creating a new genre, bringing Native contemporary music to the forefront of the mainstream music industry.
Pura Fé’s Spanish name translates as “Pure Faith”. It was given by her father who is from Puerto Rico. She was raised by her mother and gifted family of female singers that are decedents of the Tuscarora Nation that had migrated from North Carolina to New York in the early 1900’s.
Mark Puryear has performed a variety of musical styles including blues, jazz, and Afro-pop. Over the years he has performed at Smithsonian Folklife Festivals, the Montpelier Cultural Arts Center, the D.C. Blues Society Festival, in clubs, on college campuses and at private events. Mark performs solo and in variety of ensemble formats. He toured the East Coast and recorded with the acoustic blues trio BluesWorks.
While residing in Micronesia Mark founded a jazz trio and played many styles of popular music. He has worked with blues artists such as Phil Wiggins, Gaye Adegbalola, Nat Reese, Daryl Davis, Judy Luis Watson, Paul Watson, and Charley Sayles.
Currently Mark enjoys performing with bassist Harold Anderson and harp player Phil Wiggins.
North Carolina musician Lightnin’ Wells breathes new life into the vintage tunes of the 1920s and depression era America. Lightnin’ learned to play harmonica as a young child and taught himself to play the guitar as he developed a strong interest in traditional music.
He has presented his brand of acoustic blues throughout NC, the United States and Europe. Lightnin' remains an insatiable student and researcher, studying the various forms of American roots music from bygone eras.
Phil Wiggins (Takoma Park, MD) was born in Washington D.C., was attracted to the blues harp as a young man and began his musical career with some of Washington’s leading blues artists, including Archie Edwards and John Jackson.
He attributes his style to his years spent accompanying locally noted slide guitarist and gospel singer Flora Molton.
His harmonica sound developed from listening to piano and horn players, as well as the music of Sonny Terry, Sonny Boy Williamson I, Little Walter, Big Walter Horton and Junior Wells.
Phil is arguably America’s foremost blues harmonica virtuoso. While rooted in the melodic Piedmont or “Tidewater” blues of the Chesapeake region, his mastery of the instrument now transcends stylistic boundaries. He achieved worldwide acclaim over three decades as one half of the premier Piedmont blues duo of Cephas & Wiggins.
Harmonica player Jay Summerour has been involved with music for well over 40 years. Beginning his musical education on the trumpet at age 7, Summerour learned the harmonica from his grandfather Smack Martin. Largely self-taught, Summerour picked up bits and pieces from “folks he ran into”—folks like Sonny Terry, James Cotton and Magic Dick.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Summerour took the traditional harmonica into the popular arena, joining the Starland Vocal Band and playing with Nils Lofgren and his band Grin. Four of the Starland Vocal Band’s records went gold during Summerour’s tenure. Summerour began playing with Warner Williams, Piedmont blues master guitarist and vocalist, during the early 1990s, sometimes calling themselves “Little Bit of Blues.” They have been featured in concerts, on television and radio, and at festivals across the country, including appearances on the National Public Radio series Folk Masters, at the National and Lowell folk festivals and on the National Mall during the American Roots Fourth of July celebration.--excerpt from The American Folklife Center and the Public Service Collections Directorate at the Library of Congress.
Mark Graham grew up in Renton, Washington and has been playing blues and country music on the harmonica since 1970. With an encyclopedic knowledge of Southern country and blues styles, he has mastered the hallmark traditional harmonica solos: fox chases, train impressions and the call and response song accompaniment reminiscent of Sonny Terry and Peg Leg Sam.
Kim Field in his noted book "Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy Breathers", calls Graham "a walking gold mine of harmonica lore" and notes his "traditional harmonica wizardry."
Mark has performed at such venues as The Newport Folk Festival, The Prairie Home Companion and Festival Hall in London, England and has taught at The Port Townsend Blues Festival, The Augusta Heritage Festival and The Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland.
Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes, New Orleans accordion player, has traveled to over 35 countries playing his own style of blues, zydeco, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Louisiana music.
With his group the Louisiana Sunspots, Sunpie has played festival and concerts as far away as Ranvinimi, Finland located 3 hours above the Arctic Circle, Brazil, South Africa, Spain, France, and Martinique to name a few.
He’s also a veteran park ranger with the National Park Service currently working at New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park.
He is Second Chief of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang, one of the oldest existing carnival groups in New Orleans and a member of the Black Men of Labor Social Aid and Pleasure Club.
Erwin Helfer is a Chicago boogie woogie innovator and master, who has been forging his own piano music legacy. Born in 1936, Erwin has been playing and performing for over forty years. The sounds and personalities of past boogie woogie and blues pianists have nurtured Erwin's musical growth. His way of playing the piano is timeless with its power and impertinence of youth paired with the expertise and humorous wisdom of age, mellowed and ripened not in barrels but in blues joints, jazz clubs and concert halls in the States, Europe and Asia.
In his early twenties, Erwin Helfer broke racial barriers by moving from Chicago to New Orleans to live in a black neighborhood. This was in the 1950s, when crossing racial lines could land you in jail, or worse. While in New Orleans, Erwin studied with Professor Longhair and Tuts Washington, worked with trumpeter Punch Miller, and recorded with Peg Leg Willie and Big Joe Williams. When he moved back to Chicago, he became an integral part of the city’s blues culture throughout the 1960s and 1970s.For many years, Erwin accompanied Mama Yancey, the wife of Chicago blues piano patriarch Jimmy “Papa” Yancey, and later recorded one album with her. He was also mentored and influenced by Cripple Clarence Lofton, Speckled Red, and Sunnyland Slim. His solo albums include St. James Infirmary, 8 Hands On 88 Keys, 2003’s I’m Not Hungry But I Like to Eat, (which was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award), and Careless Love. Erwin has the chops, the feel, and the drive of the masters but he also pushes the “classic” blues piano music forward in a totally new direction.
Judy Laprade grew up playing piano, taking lessons, and playing at her local church. In 1985, a friend told her about a blues week camp that taught piano and thought she would give it a whirl. She fell in love with the blues, both for her own playing and playing with other people.
Judy’s first blues piano teacher was Maureen DelGrosso. Maureen turned Judy on to some greats, like Otis Spann. Judy later studied with Ann Rabson, Daryl Davis, and Erwin Helfer. She has also been influenced by many people, originators like Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller, as well as more contemporary folks like Memphis Slim and Ray Charles.
Judy says, "The people who love blues are passionate and growing in numbers, as are the people who are learning it and will carry the torch forward. ... First-rate camps have a tremendous impact. Every single person that comes is another seed to go out and spread the power of the blues.”
Sule Greg Wilson has been involved in cultural programming since Junior High School back in Washington, DC, where he studied drumming and folklore with Tunda, Baba Ngoma and Baile McKnight. After two years at Oberlin College, where he studied Western, Indian and Indonesian percussion, performing with such noted players as John Jang, Wendall Logan and Abraham Laboriel, Wilson moved to New York City and continued his education at New York University, receiving a Bachelors in TV Production and MA (History) and a Certificate in Archival Management, Historical Editing and Manuscript Conservation. His archival career took him from the New York Stock Exchange to the World Bank to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History to Phoenix, AZ's Pueblo Grande Museum.
On the cultural front, Wilson performed with Babatunde Olatunji, the International African American Ballet, Boston's Art of Black Dance and Music as well as studies with Charles "Cookie" Cooke of the Copasetics, Mama Lu Parks' Lindy Hop Ensemble, capoeira with Jelon Viera and Loremil Machado in New York and Cobrinha Mansa in D.C., and cultural studies with Raymond " Pata Larga" McKeithan Wilson has also worked with banjoist Tony Trischka, Children's music makers Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, Native American artists R. Carlos Nakai, Keith Secola and Brent Michael Davids. His work as an "edu-tainer" has taken him from Ghana to Hawaii, Mexico to Ireland, Mississippi to Minnesota and Seattle to Miami Beach. Wilson' has recorded with Fink and Marxer, Cloud Dance, Pastiche, and has produced two CDs of his own music. His writings have graced Sing Out! magazine, the Village Voice, Rhythm Music magazine, and Banjo Newsletter.
Lauren Sheehan is a charismatic 'songster', an interpreter of songs learned from some of America's greatest folk and blues artists. Her performances are memorable for the authentic range of her material: from unaccompanied ballads, to boozy Memphis blues, to old time banjo tunes, to old country songs and eclectic modern folk.
Lauren grew up in New England where she studied classical guitar as a child and became infected by the spirit of fiddle music at contra dances in western Massachusetts. She wrote her thesis on American folk music at Reed College before spending a number of years playing in small ensembles while founding, administering, and teaching in independent schools. During this time, she toured in New England, Ireland and the Pacific Northwest. She retired from teaching in 2003 and dedicated herself to full-time recording and performing at a variety of club, concert, and festival dates in solo, duo, and trio configurations. Lauren's passion for learning directly from other musicians has led her into the homes and front porches of the musical legends who passed on much of the material and stylistic qualities she presents today.
Washboard Chaz Leary is one of the world’s only professional washboard players. His many influences include western swing, delta blues, traditional and progressive jazz.
He plays in one of New Orleans' most unique and recognized bands, the Tin Men, a trio featuring washboard, guitar and sousaphone.
Chaz has played festivals and clubs from coast to coast and over the years he’s performed onstage with Bonnie Raitt, John Hammond, and many others
The gospel choir will be led by Virginia’s Vera Long. She’s been singing, teaching, and directing choirs and ensembles for over forty years. Vera grew up in a musical family where her father taught her how to sing harmony and how to read notes from hymnals. She attended Howard University with a concentration in vocal supervision.
She has directed numerous choirs in the Richmond Metropolitan area, including the WKIE Community Choir, Seed of Abraham, and choirs at various churches throughout the region. Currently, Vera sings in the Women's Choir of the Saint Paul's Baptist Church, and is a member of a praise team there, the Sounds of Praise.
