John Clark remembers his uncle, Hampton Allen, telling him about another relation named Fulton Allen. Clark's uncle regaled his nephew with tales of Fulton, a young bluesman from Ansonville playing at an Anson County juke joint in the first decades of the 20th century.

At that juke joint, Hampton Allen was in the presence of music history: His cousin Fulton was to become known in the blues world as Blind Boy Fuller. Many scholars, critics and fans believe the accomplished singer/guitarist who couldn't see left a distinctive stamp on the easygoing, up-tempo Piedmont blues sound in the 1930s and '40s.

"He was probably one of the most influential purveyors of the style," said Glenn Hinson, chairman of the folklore curriculum at UNC-Chapel Hill. "The combination he brought to the music -- melodic inventiveness, finger-picking fluency, a supple and engaging vocal delivery, a quick wit -- pulled Fuller into a separate place."

A testament to Fuller's impact has been the durability of his trademark song, "Step It Up and Go," which has been covered by artists as diverse as Bob Dylan, Carl Perkins, Mac Wiseman and Brownie McGhee.

Fuller, an Anson County native who died in 1941, spent most of his recording career living and playing in front of the tobacco warehouses in the Hayti section of Durham, where he was discovered by James Baxter Long, a store manager and part-time talent scout. Long landed the bluesman his first recording sessions with the American Record Company in 1935 and gave Allen his now-famous performing name.

And, thanks to the efforts of a core of dedicated blues researchers and neighborhood activists, the Durham community has in recent years striven to give Fuller his due as a blues icon. Two historic markers, one sponsored by the state and one by the city, were erected in Durham, which also declared a "Blind Boy Fuller Day" in the city in 2001.

However, Anson County has done little to acknowledge that a blues legend was born and reared there. Except for a sidewalk brick dedicated to Fuller in front of the Hampton B. Allen Library in Wadesboro in 2002, Fuller's legacy has been largely ignored in his hometown.

"No one ever really brought him up or talked about him very much," said Donnie Lewis, president of the Anson County NAACP.

In fact, so little has become known about Fuller's days in Anson County that his distant cousin, John Clark, has been frustrated in his efforts to unearth morsels of information about his famous ancestor. After uncovering a few nuggets, Clark said -- that, for example, a young Fulton Allen attended Pleasant Hill Baptist Church near Ansonville, where Clark's family has worshipped for generations -- "I hit a dead-end."

But both Clark and Lewis believe Fuller deserves more recognition in his hometown, and thanks in part to the dogged research of a lone Fuller fan, that recognition might be coming.

A challenge

A single phrase. That's all it took to pull Gaile Welker into the life of Blind Boy Fuller.

Welker has long been a fan of the blues and of Fuller in particular; a framed original 78 of Fuller's "Little Woman You're So Sweet" hangs on the wall of her cozy Durham apartment.

But when Welker read "Red River Blues," scholar Bruce Bastin's seminal study of Piedmont blues, it was a single line in the book that stuck in her head.

"Little is known of his early days in Wadesboro ...," Bastin wrote of Fuller in 1986. For Welker, the phrase was almost served as a challenge -- one she couldn't turn down.

"I just got the bug," she said of her Fuller research. "It's a passion. I love Blind Boy Fuller. His music speaks to me, for some reason. I just became fascinated by him."

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