Author: North Carolina Arts Council
Since 1989, the North Carolina Heritage Award has honored our state’s most eminent traditional artists and practitioners. Recipients of the Heritage Awards range from internationally acclaimed musicians to folks who quietly practice their art in family and community settings. Awardees receive a cash award and are honored in a ceremony that draws large and enthusiastic audiences. Several North Carolinians have gone on to receive the National Heritage Fellowship Awards presented by the National Endowment for the Arts.
These awards deepen our awareness of North Carolina’s diverse cultural traditions, and their importance to our state’s past, present and future.
Heritage Award recipients are nominated by citizens of the state and selected through panel process.
Bobby Hicks
Bobby Hicks and his fiddle are back home in North Carolina after twenty-two years of playing gigs on the road. Born in Newton, Bobby grew up in Greensboro during the 1930s when the North Carolina Piedmont was awash with country music. He learned to play mandolin, guitar, and fiddle--and was winning contests--by the time he was eleven years old. By the age of fifteen Bobby was on the road with Jimmy Eanes out of Danville, Virginia, and at twenty-one he filled in on bass for Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys on their Carolina tour. During the 1960s, Bobby performed with Porter Wagoner, and later with Judi Lynn’s Las Vegas television show. An innovator, he began exploring harmonies on his fiddle to capture the sounds he was hearing from Western swing fiddler Johnny Gimble. When Ricky Scaggs came calling in 1981, Bobby answered the call. His twenty-two years with that band made bluegrass history.
Bobby Hicks and his fiddle are back home in North Carolina after twenty-two years of playing gigs on the road. “I like it here,” he says about his life in Madison County. “Just about everybody I see knows me, and they call me by my first name.”
Born in Newton, Bobby grew up in Greensboro during the 1930s when the North Carolina Piedmont was awash with country music. He learned to play mandolin, guitar, and fiddle--and was winning contests--by the time he was eleven years old. “There were no teachers back then, when I was learning to play. What I know, I learned from just listening to recordings and watching other fiddle players play. You got to really listen to play by ear.”
The Hicks brothers formed a band and were soon playing weekend radio shows. By the age of fifteen Bobby was on the road with Jimmy Eanes out of Danville, Virginia, and at twenty-one he filled in on bass for Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys on their Carolina tour. At Bill Monroe’s invitation, Bobby joined Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys at the height of the band’s popularity and during the golden age of Monroe’s high lonesome sound. “Yeah, I loved it,” he says. “That was the thing back then, you know. If you made it to the Grand Old Opry, you had it made.” His career with Bill Monroe included recording some of the Blue Grass Boys’ best loved recordings, including “Roanoke,” “Wheel Hoss” and “Cheyenne.”
During the 1960s, Bobby performed with Porter Wagoner, and later with Judi Lynn’s Las Vegas television show. An innovator, he began exploring harmonies on his fiddle to capture the sounds he was hearing from Western swing fiddler Johnny Gimble. But his most important innovation came from a moment of desperate inspiration:
Well, I was in this band in Las Vegas, we had three fiddles there for a while, and I just played one part. But then they lost a fiddle player, so I had to play two parts. I decided to put a fifth string on my fiddle, so I could play the harmony parts below the lead line. I only had one fiddle at the time, so I just sat down in the dressing room at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas and bored a hole there for the fifth peg. If I’d have messed it up then I would have been up the creek because I didn’t have no more fiddle!
The complex harmonies that Bobby creates with that fifth string have made him a bluegrass legend. When Ricky Scaggs came calling in 1981, Bobby answered the call. His twenty-two years with that band made bluegrass history.
Now that he is home, Bobby Hicks is making music with his friends in Marshall every Thursday night at Zuma’s Coffee House. He appreciates the deep roots of his neighbors’ old time repertoires, and modestly claims that he is learning from them. He also makes guest appearances with his friends in bluegrass music, and has formed The Masters of Blue Grass with Del McCoury, banjo legend J.D. Crowe, mandolinist Bobby Osborne and bassist Jerry McCoury.
Bobby Hicks looks at his life with satisfaction. “It’s been a fun career. If I had it to do over, I’d do it again.”
Susan Morgan Leveille
By the time she was seven years old, Susan “was determined she was going to weave,” according to her aunt, Frances Cargill, a weaver herself. After graduating from the University of Tennessee, where she majored in Crafts, Susan taught weaving in local community colleges. In her marriage to Bob Leveille, she found a business partner and together they opened a weaving shop and teaching studio in 1977. Promoting the traditional arts of her beloved mountains is as much a part of Susan’s inheritance as her emphasis on superior craftsmanship and her passion for weaving. She has shared her skills and historical knowledge with many students at regional universities, community colleges, and craft schools. A third generation member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild and a former Board President, she has also helped develop Handmade in America, Stecoah Valley Weavers and the Appalachian Women’s Museum.
“Susan, you’re too young to weave.”
“No, I’m not."
By the time she was seven years old, Susan “was determined she was going to weave,” according to her aunt, Frances Cargill, a weaver herself. “She learned very readily. And now she’s teaching.” When the warp on her first loom needed to be set up again, Susan recalls thinking that she was “not going to wait for some adult to set this up. So that’s when I went to Penland and studied with Colonel Fishback and got proficient at setting the loom up.” Susan was ten years old that summer and she has been weaving ever since.
Her drive to study weaving was perfectly in tune with a family background that valued artistry, craftsmanship, and self-sufficiency. Susan’s father, Dr. Ralph Morgan, paid his way through medical school through crafting pewter, and he opened the Riverwood Crafts Shop in Dillsboro. A generation earlier, her great-uncle Rufus Morgan, an Episcopal priest, had enlisted family members in his efforts to establish schools, community centers, and a church. Lucy Morgan followed her brother Rufus to Penland, where her efforts to establish weaving as supplemental income for local women evolved into the Penland School of Crafts. Rufus persuaded Susan’s Aunt Frances to run the Nonah Weavers — a “little Penland,” Rufus called it — in Cartoogechaye, where Susan grew up.
After graduating from the University of Tennessee, where she majored in Crafts, Susan taught weaving in local community colleges. In her marriage to Bob Leveille, she found a business partner and together they opened a weaving shop and teaching studio in 1977. “Courage, courage, courage!” she says. “He gave me the courage to do this. My life would never have been what it is without him. That’s when I really started weaving for a living.”
Promoting the traditional arts of her beloved mountains is as much a part of Susan’s inheritance as her emphasis on superior craftsmanship and her passion for weaving. She has shared her skills and historical knowledge with many students at regional universities, community colleges, and craft schools. A third generation member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild and a former Board President, she has also helped develop Handmade in America, Stecoah Valley Weavers and the Appalachian Women’s Museum.
The loom that Susan mastered when she was a child now sits in her workshop where the warp is set up for weaving rag rugs. “I don’t get the [same] rhythm with rag strips as I do with yarn,” she says, “but there is still a rhythm, and a process.” Her voice takes on the cadence of the loom, speaking as the shuttle flies, pausing for the uplift of the treadle and the crash of the beater bar.
I have learned over the years that I like process. I beat, switch feet, beat again, shuttle goes back. And you do that over and over. It is a process, repeated again and again. I find it very relaxing. And it’s meditative to me.
Sid Luck
Sid is the fifth generation of Lucks to dig, turn, and burn the local clay of Seagrove. Earlier generations of potters in the Luck family had to supplement their income by farming, but Sid took a different path. He joined the marines, served in Vietnam, earned a degree in science education with a specialty in chemistry from North Carolina State University and taught high school chemistry in Charlotte, Tallahassee, Florida, Winston-Salem, and finally, in Seagrove. Making pottery was never far from his mind, however, and he always kept a pottery wheel nearby “to keep my hand in.” After much thought, Sid Luck took a fateful plunge. “I had always wanted to strictly do pottery, so I got the nerve up in 1990, to resign my teaching position, and do this full time. And I have never regretted it to this day.”
Tending a burning kiln at his pottery in Seagrove, Sid Luck tells this story:
When I was about fourteen, I went trick or treating at Waymon Cole’s house. Waymon was one of my distant cousins, and I worked for him at J.B. Cole’s Pottery for many, many, many years. I [was] all decked out in my costume, the only part of me that he recognized was my hands. When I reached to get my treat he looked at me and he said, ‘I’d know Bud Luck’s hands anywhere.’ I had hands like my grandfather, Bud Luck. Very long thin fingers, and a thin hand. That’s what I’ve been told, most of my life, that I had potter's hands.
Sid is the fifth generation of Lucks to dig, turn, and burn the local clay. His ancestor William Luck owned the largest pottery shop in mid-1800s Seagrove. William’s son Henry taught the craft to his son Bud, Sid’s grandfather. “My grandfather loved doing pottery,” Sid remembers. “And of course, he forced his sons into making pottery. My father never really liked it, but he had the attitude that this was something that had been in our family and my brother and I needed to be exposed to it and see if we liked it. I, for some reason, just took to it like a duck to water. I really, really liked it — like it was innate in me to do this. It’s been my passion, [but] I knew that I couldn’t make a living at it.”
Earlier generations of potters in the Luck family had to supplement their income by farming, but Sid took a different path. He joined the marines, served in Vietnam, earned a degree in science education with a specialty in chemistry from North Carolina State University and taught high school chemistry in Charlotte, Tallahassee, Florida, Winston-Salem, and finally, in Seagrove. Making pottery was never far from his mind, however, and he always kept a pottery wheel nearby “to keep my hand in.”
By the mid-1970s, Seagrove had emerged as a shopping destination as word spread about this unique pottery community. After much thought, Sid Luck took a fateful plunge. “I had always wanted to strictly do pottery, so I got the nerve up in 1990, to resign my teaching position, and do this full time. And I have never regretted it to this day.”
He prefers to make the utilitarian wares that are deeply rooted in the local tradition. “I like doing functional things, I like carrying on the tradition I grew up with. So I like to do pitchers, and jugs, and I like crocks, and I do pickling jars and churns and those kinds of things. They just remind me of where I came from, I guess. I feel comfortable doing those things. “
Today the sixth and seventh generations of Lucks are practicing the craft of making pottery. Sid’s sons Jason and Matthew grew up in their Dad’s pottery shop and each has taken the craft to a new level. Now Matt’s children are learning at their grandpa’s wheel. Sid admits being happy about all of that. “I’m very, very proud and honored that they would feel that they ought to carry it on.”
Bill Myers
Bill Myers’ friends know that “Popeye” Myers, jazz musician and band leader of “The Monitors” for more than fifty years, and William E. Myers, distinguished educator, civic leader and Music Director of St. John A.M.E. Zion Church in Wilson are one and the same. Bill credits music with bringing his contrasting experiences into a harmonious life story. “Music,” he says, “has that kind of power.” In classrooms and concert halls, Bill Myers is a consummate musician who changes minds and touches hearts. He has led The Monitors in countless performances, delighting generations of Eastern North Carolinians. As a spokesman for the African American Music Trail, he brings musical virtuosity and a deep commitment to support the region’s dynamic African American heritage.
Bill Myers’ friends know that “Popeye” Myers, jazz musician and band leader of “The Monitors” for more than fifty years, and William E. Myers, distinguished educator, civic leader and Music Director of St. John A.M.E. Zion Church in Wilson are one and the same. Bill credits music with bringing his contrasting experiences into a harmonious life story. “Music,” he says, “has that kind of power.”
Music was a force in the African American community where Bill grew up in 1930s Greenville. Early in his life, his grandmother discovered his gift for picking out tunes on the piano, and soon he was taking lessons and playing in church. In his neighborhood, bluesman Mo Griffith caught Bill’s attention: “He used to chew tobacco and sing the blues, and I would follow him everywhere he went.” The local Elks band stirred his soul during “turning-outs,” New Orleans-style funeral processions that escorted the deceased from church to cemetery with great solemnity and paraded back with exuberance. “And I loved that! I would walk along and I’d hear trombones. I said, ‘Boy, this is what I want to do.’ I knew then that I wanted to be a musician.”
Exploring New York City during a Sunday School convention, Bill caught Willis “Gator Tail” Jackson’s gyrating saxophone act at the Apollo Theater and knew he had found his instrument. “I said, ‘By gosh, that’s good stuff!’ So I came back home, and I wanted to play the saxophone but could not afford a saxophone.” James Thomas Edmiston, an Elks band member, loaned the young teen his sax. When Virginia State University graduate Bob Lewis became Epps High School’s bandmaster, Bill found his mentor. “Please,” said Bill, with Edmiston’s sax in hand, “show me how to play this horn.”
Determined to attend Virginia State, Bill studied his saxophone and joined local bands to earn money. Inspired by memories of “Gator Tail” Jackson, he once led a screaming crowd out of a local club and around the block, honking his horn to shouts of “Blow, Popeye, blow!” At that time, Bill says, “minstrel shows would come to town. I started playing with the Winstead Mighty Minstrel Show in Wilson. And I even did a little tour with them. I’m still a young teenager trying to do these kinds of things, but saying, ‘This is not my life.’”
After a music degree from Virginia State and a tour of duty with the army in Korea, Bill came home and found a job teaching music and band in Elm City. “I had aspirations of being a professional musician. That was my dream in life, to be in the bright lights, like Duke Ellington and Count Basie.” Teaching rural North Carolina’s African American children matured his ambitions, however, and he began to dream about his students’ futures. “It just brought something up in me. I stayed close to forty years, in education, because I got caught up in it myself. And that’s where my art was. And I don’t regret it at all.”
In classrooms and concert halls, Bill Myers is a consummate musician who changes minds and touches hearts. He has led The Monitors in countless performances, delighting generations of Eastern North Carolinians. As a spokesman for the African American Music Trail, he brings musical virtuosity and a deep commitment to support the region’s dynamic African American heritage. “It’s what I know,” he says, “because I lived it.”
Arnold Richardson
“It was something that I was just called to do, and kind of compelled to do.” Even as a child, Arnold Richardson knew that the arts were powerful vehicles for expressing cultural identity. His parents, Quetta Thomas, of the Tuscarora-Iroquois Confederacy in New York and Samuel Richardson, a Haliwa-Saponi from Hollister, North Carolina, met and married in Philadelphia. They raised their son in the city among generations of Native American urbanites from many tribes. Arnold continues to walk the line between cultures. He has held workshops for the Coharie, the Waccamaw-Sioux, the Lumbee and other tribal groups in North Carolina, and has written a textbook of Eastern Woodland Indian Arts.
“It was something that I was just called to do, and kind of compelled to do.” Even as a child, Arnold Richardson knew that the arts were powerful vehicles for expressing cultural identity. His parents, Quetta Thomas, of the Tuscarora-Iroquois Confederacy in New York and Samuel Richardson, Haliwa-Saponi from Hollister, North Carolina, met and married in Philadelphia. They raised their son in the city among generations of Native American urbanites from many tribes.
Arnold was keenly aware of the cultural differences between himself and his Philadelphia classmates. “I was educated in the dominant society, but I was educated at home, in the traditional way, too. Now that’s the hard part as a youngster when you’re growing up. You have to walk two worlds.” Arnold’s affinity for art and his identification with the traditional world led him to study with the native artists he met through his mother’s brother in New York. He learned that deep roots connected his Tuscarora and Iroquois ancestors.
During the civil rights struggles of the mid-1960s, Arnold joined organizations that addressed the inequities experienced by Native American communities nation-wide. From his own experience, he understood that artists play a critical role in recovering social memory and shaping tribal consciousness. The arts, he believed, can empower self-expression, forge a shared identity, and strengthen the bonds of community. When the call came from his Haliwa-Saponi tribal brothers to revive their dormant arts traditions, he was ready.
The programs Arnold Richardson introduced have sparked a creative renaissance. Out of his classes in beadwork, pottery and stone carving have come artists whose works exploring Haliwa-Saponi identity are prized by collectors today. Arnold restored a tradition of tribal dance and founded the first Haliwa-Saponi drum group. His extensive tribal connections introduced Haliwa-Saponi artists to the multiple tribal art forms that characterize most powwows. The Haliwa-Saponi Powwow, the first in North Carolina, now draws more than 10,000 visitors and celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2015. When Arnold Richardson began his work most Haliwa-Saponi could not remember life with such cultural celebrations and artistic traditions. Now most cannot remember life without them.
Arnold continues to walk the line between cultures. He has held workshops for the Coharie, the Waccamaw-Sioux, the Lumbee and other tribal groups in North Carolina, and has written a textbook of Eastern Woodland Indian Arts. Grounded in tradition, he performs as Tsa’ne Do’se and records original compositions on his cherished flutes.
You try to hold on as much and as strongly as possible to old traditions that were handed down from generation to generation. They were done for a reason. And that reason had very strong purpose and intent, and that was to teach children the legends. Legends are stories. A legend is something that is undying and remains to teach the younger generation of the historical times, the times past, the hard times. If you don’t preserve those legends, which is part of your culture, the legend dies. When the legend dies, so does your culture. You lose your culture, you lose your identity. And you lose your identity, on that traditional level, or more spiritual level.There’s no foundation.
Arnold Richardson and Netye Lynch at Historic Halifax - Singing on the Land Series