RCCAC Brings Wiggins and Friends for a Night of the Blues May 16^th

 Local audiences have been rockin’ with Piedmont Blues musician Phil Wiggins for over two decades, enjoying his performances with the late John Cephas during Augusta’s Blues Week at Augusta and on Mountain Stage live radio broadcasts.  Now Wiggins will be joining forces with D.C. Blues musician Rick Franklin for a special night of the Blues with Wiggins and Friends at the Randolph County Community Arts Center Saturday, May 16^th at 7:30 p.m.

 Phil Wiggins was providing harmonica accompaniment for gospel singer-guitarist Flora Melton when he met Cephas at the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival in 1977. Along with pianist Wilber “Big Chief” Ellis and bassist James Bellamy, John and Phil formed the Barrelhouse Rockers. Then a year after Ellis’ death, the duo of Cephas & Wiggins was born. For 30 years, Cephas and Wiggins performed the East Coast Piedmont style of Blues both nationally and internationally until Cephas passed away in March.

 Wiggins was born in Washington, D.C. in 1954 and spent his childhood summers at his grandmother’s home in Alabama, where he listened to old-time hymns sung in church in the traditional call-and-response style. Phil 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, and attributes his style to his years spent accompanying slide guitarist and gospel singer Flora Molton.

 Wiggins' harmonica sound also 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 also apprenticed with Mother Scott (a contemporary of Bessie Smith). Besides being a renowned harmonica player, Wiggins is also a gifted songwriter and singer.

 Born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1952, Rick Franklin has been playing and singing the Blues at local festivals and community events, as well as various clubs and cafes since 1981. Rick's musical style of Blues is known as the "Piedmont" style identified with such legendary players like Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller and William More along with contemporary players like Cephas, the late John Jackson and the late Maryland resident, Archie Edwards.

 As Franklin explains, Eastern Piedmont Blues is influenced by ragtime, country string bands, traveling medicine shows, and popular song of the early 20th century; East Coast Piedmont Blues blended both black and white, rural and urban song elements in the diverse urban centers of the Southeast and mid-Atlantic region. In contrast, the Delta Blues style of rural Mississippi is believed to have less of a white influence, as it was produced in a region with a higher concentration of African Americans.

 The Piedmont Blues is a type of Blues music characterized by a unique finger picking method on the guitar in which a regular, alternating-thumb bass pattern supports a melody using treble strings. The Piedmont Blues typically refers to a greater area than Piedmont, which refers to the East Coast of the United States from about Richmond, Virginia to Atlanta, Georgia. Piedmont Blues musicians come from this area, as well as Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Florida.

 Tickets for the Wiggins and Friends concert are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors, and $5 for students, and can be purchased at the door while they last, at the RCCAC office or by phone using a credit or debit card. For tickets and more information, call 637-2355 or log onto www.randolpharts.org.

 The 2008-2009 Evening Concert Series at the RCCAC is locally sponsored by Family Dental Practice, an anonymous Friend of the Arts, Allegheny Insurance, WDNE Radio, The Inter-Mountain Newspaper, Mac Pritt, and The Graceland Inn and Conference Center of Davis and Elkins College; and with financial assistance from the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts.