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."

For the last several years, Welker has dedicated most of her free time to delving into Fuller's past, especially his formative years in Anson County.

Welker launched her search by reading previous Fuller research by noted ethnomusicologists Sam Charters, Paul Oliver and Bastin, whose "Red River Blues" contains what many believe to be the best published account of Fuller's life.

In his book, Bastin asserted that Fulton Allen was born July 10, 1907, in Wadesboro to Calvin and Mary Jane Allen. Bastin wrote that the family of 10 siblings wasn't very musical, with Fulton being the only boy who showed any early interest in the guitar (and even then he didn't get serious about music until young adulthood).

The family subsisted by sharecropping, and, according to Bastin, Fulton only reached fourth grade in school. The author asserted that Mary Jane Allen died while the family was living in Anson County, and in the mid-1920s Calvin moved the family about 20 miles east to Rockingham. It was from those humble beginnings that an African-American boy growing up in the Jim Crow South eventually became one of the most recorded Piedmont blues artist of his generation.

Feeling his presence

With that research as a jumping-off point, Welker started reaching officials and community leaders in Anson County in the late 1990s, and since then she has made numerous trips to Wadesboro. She has combed through census records, auction sheets, school documents and church records in an effort to nail down Fuller's history.

Welker thinks her efforts are paying off: She believes she might have uncovered some crucial details about Fuller's early life that contradict accepted knowledge.

She said, for example, that her research indicates that Fuller was reared not in Wadesboro but out in the country between the tiny towns of Ansonville and Burnsville.

To get a feel for where Fuller came from, Welker traveled down the back roads around those two communities and immediately felt a spiritual, almost ghostly connection.

"You can go out in the country, and it's really eerie," she said, almost in a whisper. "It's such pretty country. You can stand out there in a field, and it's so quiet. Except for the phone lines, you might think you're in the 18th century."

In addition to pinpointing where Fuller grew up, Welker also believes Fuller came from a larger family of up to 16 siblings.

Welker said Fuller remained connected to Anson County even after he launched his music career. He often returned to Wadesboro to ply his trade, playing from house to house to scrape up money and sometimes renting a room with other musicians.

He also played on the street corners of downtown Wadesboro; on one of those sidewalk excursions he met fellow bluesman Sonny Terry, the legendary harmonica player and singer who went on to become a Fuller disciple and enjoyed a long recording career in his own right.

Welker has toyed with the idea of writing a book or other large-scale project based on her research. However, even though Hinson believes her research has produced a fair amount of valuable information, Welker worries that her research would be assailed by hard-core, perfectionist blues scholars and writers.

So for now, she said, she'll concentrate on writing short stories about Fuller -- and, of course, continuing her research. She also hopes her efforts -- and those of other researchers, journalists and fans -- will help bring recognition for him in his home county.

"I just wish someone [in Anson County] would realize" his importance, she said, then quickly added, "I think they're starting to."

Growing interest

She just might be right, and it could be the younger generations who bring Fuller into the Anson County forefront.

Allen Library manager Phoebe Medlin said local schoolchildren frequently come to her facility to research Fuller for school projects. To commemorate Black History Month, the library and the Anson County Historical Society have scheduled a Feb. 2 presentation on Fuller: Anson County native and music scholar Fetzer Mills Jr. will speak to local youth about the bluesman.

Medlin hopes such programs will spur needed interest in Fuller in Anson County, where, she said, adding that she'll try to use her position as the head of the Ansonville Historical Society to generate further awareness of the bluesman.

In addition, growing numbers of Fuller fans are aware of the bluesman's ties to Anson County. Performance artist Darrell Stover, a former staffer at the Hayti Heritage Center and a member of the group behind the placing of the two street markers in Durham, wrote a poem, "Stepped It Up and Gone On," that mentions Fuller's Wadesboro connection. Stover read the poem at the dedication ceremony for the city of Durham's marker and remains a fervent fan of the bluesman.

"He left a wide body of work to engage in and enjoy," Stover said. "But there's something else about Piedmont style blues and his reading of it. ... It's up-tempo for a reason. It's celebratory and participatory. It's for partying and having a good time."

Count John Clark, Fuller's distant cousin and fellow Anson County native, among the legions of Fuller fans. Clark said that after learning about his relation to the bluesman in 1998, he bought several Fuller CDs and discovered that Fuller has several relatives scattered around Anson County and beyond.

Of course, Clark noted, just about every family member who knew Fuller directly has died, hindering his efforts to find out more about the influential bluesman.

However, when the Allens meet for a family reunion in Raleigh this June, Fuller will probably be a hot topic of conversation, and Clark just might pass on the stories his uncle told him about the unassuming Anson County youngster who grew up to be a giant in the blues world.

(Ryan Whirty is a freelance writer based in Rochester, N.Y. He frequently visits family in North Carolina.)