Sugar Man

Cootie Stark (born James Miller), a blind street musician, learned to play the blues on the streets of Greenville, South Carolina, in the 1930’s. When in his 20’s, he traveled throughout the south, playing with blues legends such as Pink Anderson, Peg Leg Howell, Simmie Dooley, Peg Leg Sam and Josh White in cities such as Knoxville, Asheville, Greensboro, and Columbia. While other blues artists recorded albums and achieved a level of recognition within American musical culture, Cootie played small venues from town to town across the south, keeping old time original blues alive through his playing style. A partnership with musicologist and entrepreneur Timothy Duffy resulted in Cootie playing venues in New York and Europe and recording a couple of albums, such as Raw Sugar and Sugar Man. "They say the older you get, the more fun you gonna have, and I believe them now," Stark says. "I just wish I’d had some of this a long time ago. I’ve had a lot of wasted time, a lot of time gone. But that was just an old, bumpy road."*

*adapted from the liner notes by Peter Cooper