In the thirties Blind Boy Fuller was a superstar...
Blind Boy Fuller in Durham, NC.
Fuller only recorded with two other guitar players:
Reverend Gary Davis and Floyd Council.
Reverend Gary Davis
Fuller took the Trice Brothers to sessions with him and didn't record with either one; but Floyd backed up Fuller on seven records including Boots and Shoes and Oozin' You Off My Mind. Davis and Fuller each held Floyd in high esteem. It's unfortunate that he only got to make six commercial recordings of his own. I reckon it's sort of an accident of history that Syd Barrett named his band, Pink Floyd, after Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
Floyd Council is buried in an umnarked grave in Sanford, NC.
Floyd Council is buried in an umnarked grave in Sanford, NC.
The Floyd Council Memorial Project came about because I was complaining to Josh Preslar about the fact that Fuller's grave had been paved over, most of the other Carolina bluesmen and women were lost or buried up north where they'd migrated in the forties, fifties and sixties and Floyd Council's grave in particular was still unmarked and located in a graveyard that was so overgrown and chigger- infested you couldn't move around in it without giving blood. "Why doesn't somebody do something about this?' I wailed...
Preslar asked, "Why don't you?"
So, here we are...
see, the project has four goals:
1. tracking down the exact location of Floyd's grave (I've got it narrowed down to within about ten feet as of this moment - I have an assurance from Floyd's son and the man who physically buried Floyd in the ground that when we get that part of the cemetery cleaned out and cleared up we should be able to identify the actual plot with complete accuracy).
2. We're gonna clean up the cemetery. It's twenty-three acres of overgrowth, undergrowth, venomous snakes and spiders, poison ivy, oak and sumac and a tangled mat of vines that, were it hung out, dried, cut into nine foot sections and painted some hideous pastel colour would probably fetch a nice round number of dollars at the Pier One Imports in town...Ace Hardware is helping out with Chainsaws and Weed Whackers, David H. Walker has offered to lend us his tractor and back hoe and we have about thirty volunteers who intend to tear down all that brush, pile it, burn it and reveal the cemetery underneath...
3. We're gonna mark the grave with some suitable memorial...details are still being worked out. I'd like to have better involvement with the Blues In Schools program than I have now - I'd like to involve music and art teachers around the triangle and get the kids to paint tiles and maybe do a little fountain or a small plaza in a park in town (we're talking about a little something like that in both Sanford - where he lived the last seven years of his life and is the place where he's buried - and Chapel Hill - where he lived all the rest of his life) in addition to a more traditional gravestone out at the gravesite...
4. With the money that's left, we'd like to seed a little namesake festival for Floyd Council here in the triangle...the folks in Sanford seem to be fairly excited about the idea, but it'd suit me just fine if it were anywhere in the piedmont and even for it to float from location to location...
Preslar asked, "Why don't you?"
So, here we are...
see, the project has four goals:
1. tracking down the exact location of Floyd's grave (I've got it narrowed down to within about ten feet as of this moment - I have an assurance from Floyd's son and the man who physically buried Floyd in the ground that when we get that part of the cemetery cleaned out and cleared up we should be able to identify the actual plot with complete accuracy).
2. We're gonna clean up the cemetery. It's twenty-three acres of overgrowth, undergrowth, venomous snakes and spiders, poison ivy, oak and sumac and a tangled mat of vines that, were it hung out, dried, cut into nine foot sections and painted some hideous pastel colour would probably fetch a nice round number of dollars at the Pier One Imports in town...Ace Hardware is helping out with Chainsaws and Weed Whackers, David H. Walker has offered to lend us his tractor and back hoe and we have about thirty volunteers who intend to tear down all that brush, pile it, burn it and reveal the cemetery underneath...
3. We're gonna mark the grave with some suitable memorial...details are still being worked out. I'd like to have better involvement with the Blues In Schools program than I have now - I'd like to involve music and art teachers around the triangle and get the kids to paint tiles and maybe do a little fountain or a small plaza in a park in town (we're talking about a little something like that in both Sanford - where he lived the last seven years of his life and is the place where he's buried - and Chapel Hill - where he lived all the rest of his life) in addition to a more traditional gravestone out at the gravesite...
4. With the money that's left, we'd like to seed a little namesake festival for Floyd Council here in the triangle...the folks in Sanford seem to be fairly excited about the idea, but it'd suit me just fine if it were anywhere in the piedmont and even for it to float from location to location...
To find out more:
The story - told in ugly little fits and starts - about how Bullfrog started chasing around after Floyd Council's grave is told painfully and slowly at this blog. Click on the picture to be taken to the site...
He's lazy and irresposible and doesn't update often enough.
To do something:
Go to the Floyd Council Memorial Project on Facebook and click on the "like" button. Doing this will let us keep you up-to-date with all of the cool things we're doing to raise money and the progress of the project...
To do some more:
We'll be using IndieGoGo to raise money for Floyd's memorial. The link will go live on December First.