The Carolina Chocolate Drops brought music that had been forgotten and even looked down upon into the rarefied world of art music—the country mouse ushered from dusty backwoods to the velvet seats of the city mouse’s concert hall. While at first listen the Carolina Chocolate Drops might sound like a scratchy field recording from the wanderings of Alan Lomax, their collective musicianship and charisma gained them enthusiastic audiences who knew little or nothing of the well from which they were drawing.
The 15th Anniversary Edition now includes an additional seven unreleased tracks, further proof of how talented and visionary the group was; their love for the source material unearthed the dignity, beauty, and strength of the working-class folks of pre-industrial America.
Carolina Chocolate Drops remembered and reimagined Black string music, an overlooked genre from an era when African-American musicians played for multi-racial audiences. In fact, one of the era’s primary instruments, the banjo, was derived from African antecedents. Through the years, the music evolved into “country music”, which was primarily played by whites and associated with the white American South.
In recent years, some Black musicians—most notably Beyoncé and the soundtrack to “Sinners”—have reclaimed that legacy and flipped the script. Still, the Carolina Chocolate Drops were pioneers of their time, staking out unprecedented ground, even if they never found the broad-based audience their talent warranted.
Growing from a small but fertile movement of musicians and fans rediscovering and celebrating this lost music, Carolina Chocolate Drops became its greatest ambassadors. They danced a fine line between highlighting traditional music and going beyond its boundaries. Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson were multi-instrumentalists who met at the 2005 Black Banjo Gathering in North Carolina and learned the traditional repertoire and playing styles from old-time forgotten musicians such as Piedmont-style fiddler Joe Thompson.
Genuine Negro Jig, their 2010 third album and their first on the prestigious Nonesuch label, landed them on top of the folk and bluegrass charts and won a Grammy. On it, the musicians reconstituted Piedmont music of North Carolina and other rural styles, but also slipped in unexpected touches, such as an a cappella version of “Reynadine”, an 18th-century folk ballad from the British Isles, sung gorgeously by Giddens, who previously sang opera as well as Irish music.
The group’s original “Cornbread and Butter Beans” sounds like an old folk tune, highlighting the simple pleasures of domestic life of a couple who had grace if little money. “Cornbread and butter beans, and you across the table / Eatin’ them beans and makin’ love as long as I am able.”
The song’s narrator spells out an anthem for country folk who rejected the siren call of the Great Migration to cities. “I can’t read and don’t care, and education is awful / Raising heck and writin’ checks, it ought to be unlawful / Silk hose and frilly clothes is just a waste of money / Come with me and stay with me and say you’ll be my honey.”
In contrast, the group included “Hit’ Em Up Style”, a 2001 pop hit for the R&B singer Blu Cantrell. The narrator tells a story about taking revenge on her cheating man by going to Neiman-Marcus with his charge card and then throwing away all his possessions. “Hey ladies / When your man wanna get buck-wild / Just go back and hit ’em up style / Get your hands on his cash and / Spend it to the last dime.” Sung by Giddens in a bluesy growl reminiscent of Bessie Smith, Carolina Chocolate Drops’ fiddle-fueled version makes the song sound contemporary with their folk tunes, tacitly acknowledging the theme of unfaithful lovers’ timelessness.
A previously unreleased song, the Giddens-Robinson original “Avalon”, feels like a long-lost Americana spiritual with its mournful fiddling. Still, its spare drumming and lovely harmonies make it sound both ancient and elegantly modern. The gospel blues song “City of Refuge” was recorded in 1928 by Blind Willie Johnson, and here it is a simple but powerful spiritual, urgently asking people to come to Jesus and to the church, where they will be safe and cared for.
Two other unreleased songs, “Little Rabbit” and “Memphis Shakedown”, show Carolina Chocolate Drops in full hoedown mode, rocking out with harmonica and kazoo, bristling with the kind of energy that delighted audiences at their live shows.
While the musicians brought sophisticated textures to the plain cloth of folk music, they played it unironically and accepted it on its own terms. Using the outdated and rejected word “negro” in the album’s title probably raised eyebrows at the time, and some of the lyrics, even 15 years ago, were no longer politically correct. On “You’re baby ain’t sweet like mine,” Flemons sings along with Giddens banjo picking and kazoo solo: “And when I’m feelin’ lonesome and blue / My baby knows just what to do / She even call me honey / She even let me spend her money / Never has my baby put me outdoor / She even buy me all my clothes.”
The title song, in fact, is a masterpiece of economic but evocative playing. Though not a lively jig as the title suggests, this minor-key extended fiddle tune is a sad beauty, made extraordinary by a mesmerizing matrix of percussion: hand claps, hamboneing, foot stomping, rattling bones, and Middle Eastern finger cymbals.
While Carolina Chocolate Drops may have seemed like the product of an ethnomusicologist’s fever dream, the members made the music fascinating and loads of fun. While audiences—both white and Black—didn’t seem to know what to make of young Black musicians playing what they thought was Southern white music, the Carolina Chocolate Drops did garner a devoted fan base. The musicians—particularly MacArthur-winning Giddens—went on to other projects, but continued to call attention to a chapter in Black history that almost slipped away. This expanded anniversary edition makes an even stronger case for the soulful power of this forgotten music.