Music

The historically Black neighborhoods of Chapel Hill and Carrboro have a long and storied musical legacy. Music has played a tremendous role in practices of faith in the area going back to the 19th century and before. In a 2007 oral history, Mrs. Brenda Jackson pointed to the historical roots of singing in worship services in the community:

Singing has a lot of meaning. It’s like a ministry within itself….That’s our heritage, darling. That’s our roots. When we didn’t have anything else, we could sing. We could hum. We could hum a tune in our hearts and then just be uplifted that way. So the type of worship goes back even in the 1800s… slavery time, you know. They didn’t have church but they all had a song in their hearts.

Over the years, several local Black churches have organized multiple choirs and praise teams, sometimes having specific choices for men, women, children, young adults, or other groups. Choir members for the Voices of Joy at St. Joseph CME Church like Bertina Parrish, Betty Geer and Sherdenia Weaver speak to the powerful role of music in their relationship to God and their spiritual community in their oral histories. And in her oral history about St. Paul AME Church, Arminta Foushee discussed the importance of choir anniversaries at the church.

Doug Clark remembered how gospel music had an impact outside of worship as it fueled the daily work of men from the neighborhood who were digging waterlines for the city:

These guys in the morning – you pass them by – they’re singing. All of them got picks and shovels, digging the water line with that hard dirt going down Merritt Mill Road. They didn’t have back hoes at the time. And you see, the kids – they look at all the progress they made back then…singing gospel tunes and they’re just singing and throwing that pick at that hard clay.

The community produced its own gospel groups beyond the church choirs. Ms. Susie Weaver, who owned a funeral home and store with her husband and was also a beautician and minister, created the Weaver Gospel Singers. The group had a weekly radio program on WSRC out of Durham, NC on Sundays. They also toured churches, as well as hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons. Also a civil rights activist, Ms. Weaver released her own civil rights song, “Freedom in Chapel Hill.” The legacy of the Weaver Gospel Singers is carried on today by the next generation of the family with the Junior Weaver Gospel Singers.

Secular music has also had a huge role to play in the community’s history. From 1942 to 1944, the Navy stationed the B-1 Navy Band in Chapel Hill to play music for the flight school at UNC. The B-1 band was the first of over 100 all-Black bands that the Navy created for use both in the U.S. and overseas during World War II. Because the university did not provide housing for Black servicemen, they were housed at Hargraves Community Center in the Pottersfield/Northside neighborhood. Youngsters in the community saw the band members marching through the neighborhood on their way to campus in the mornings and looked up to the servicemen. Doug Clark recalled: “They would leave every morning about seven o’clock in the morning and march, rain, sleet, or snow, from right up Roberson Street all the way to Cameron Avenue all the way in front of South Building to do their drills for the pre-flight schools. And they wold turn around and go back. This was twice a day every day.” Many of the B1 band members were originally music students from North Carolina HBCUs before the war, and wound up becoming K-12 band directors in North Carolina after they completed their service in the Navy.

The B1 band inspired a whole generation of young people in the community to take up music. After the war when the band was relocated to Pearl Harbor, parents urged Lincoln High School to start its own band program. Mary Norwood Jones remembered the early days of the Lincoln band:

Well, we were getting started and what happened then was that Mr. Pickard would put all of the instruments out on tables and people would go into the room and choose the instrument that they were interested in playing so that everyone would know all the different instruments, and that is not done this time and day. Some students are way up in high school before they know all the different instruments. He put them on display. When I came along I was very interested in the trombone because it looked to be hard to play and I couldn't understand how you could just slide an instrument and make notes. I chose the trombone, and I told Mr. Pickard, "I don't think I would ever understand how to play this." He said, "Why don't you take some lessons on it?"

Mr. Pickard gave Ms. Jones lessons and she wound up playing the trombone in the band. Doug Clark’s brother John started with the clarinet and, when he was old enough to join the band himself , Doug started playing the drums with the goal of becoming the drum major. “I would see the drum major [of the B-1 band] and I loved that…I just thought he had control of that band. I just thought he was super ‘bad.’”

Lincoln High School’s band was highly regarded and participated in parades and events both in Chapel Hill and beyond. Clarke Egerton remembered the Lincoln High School marching band’s experience in local parades:

It was a chance for the students to say, "Look mom, what I can do." And it gave them so much pride to be in a marching band, and everybody's just alike, all step together. We played music together, and it's just a wonderful skill. I just get goose bumps just thinking' about it right now, the way the crowds would just cheer us on, and especially when we got up there by Fowler's, where the Christmas Parade went. Just one parade - two parades: Homecoming Parade and Christmas Parade. Get up there at Fowler's Food Store and all of the white students from the university would come down to see the Lincoln band and they would just cheer us on. And the students just enjoyed that. And the band would step high, and play, and they enjoyed the discipline.

Some high school band members went on to have musical careers of their own. In the mid-1950s, Doug Clark started a band with some of his classmates. Originally, they played covers of “the Clovers, the Drifters, the Platters, Little Richard. [and] Chuck Berry” for local teens at a place called The Patio. Eventually, the band evolved into Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, which became nationally known for performing racy songs that would get laughs as well as getting people on the dance floor at fraternity parties and other gigs throughout the college circuit.The band’s lineup changed over the years but often featured Prince Taylor on vocals, June Bug on trumpet, Bill Little on guitar and Doug’s brother John Clark managing the band and playing saxophone.

In 1958, Charlie Mason opened a motel, which provided a place for Black entertainers like Ella Fitzgerald, Ike and Tina Turner, Cab Calloway, Dinah Washington, and James Brown to stay when they were in the area to perform for white audiences at the University. At that time, the other area hotels refused service to African Americans. The Star Lite Supper Club attached to the motel featured live music and dancing, and some of those world-famous performers would perform at the club for Black audiences while they were in town.

In the early 1960s, Doug Clark’s band was becoming very well-known when he was approached by Ike and Tina Turner about becoming their drummer. Mr. Clark recommended a local young drummer, Bubba Norwood, who had his own band called The Scepters, for for the job. Mr. Norwood recalled, “they had called on Doug to play, but he said he was already established and had his own group… so he recommended me.” After that, things moved pretty quickly. He remembered, “they called me and asked me could I come and audition. So, I accepted it. So, I went over and I auditioned and I passed.” But he couldn’t go on tour without his mother’s approval. Mr. Norwood said, “Ike and Tina both had to come and speak with my mom because I just finished high school. I was 17 years old at the time. They came over and Ike talked to my mother and she let me go.” After that he “rehearsed one day and was gone the next” and wound up touring for many years with Ike and Tina Turner and other famous artists like Gladys Knight and the Pips, Curtis Mayfield, Patti Labelle, Marvin Gaye, and the Monkees.

Kenny Mann’s band Liquid Pleasure became prominent in the1980s. They recorded an album in 1982 and in the late 1980s started playing weddings, business conventions, and corporate parties. They have traveled all over the world playing for organizations for Esquire magazine, IBM, resort properties, and more.

The musical legacy of Black Chapel Hill and Carrboro is a long and proud one. As groups like the Junior Weaver Gospel Singers pick up where their predecessors left off, new generations of musicians are learning to play instruments in the local schools and creating their own signature sounds in garage bands, in home recording studios, and on TikTok. The next Susie Weaver, Doug Clark, Bubba Norwood, or Kenny Mann may be just about to make it big – better catch them at the Northside Festival while you still can!