The Carolina Chocolate Drops
The Carolina Chocolate Drops: Out of the Archives


On Saturday, February 18, 2012, the Library of Congress’s Coolidge auditorium hosted a relaxed and thoroughly enjoyable concert by Grammy-Award-winning old-time folk music group The Carolina Chocolate Drops. The concert featured old-fashioned music on guitar, banjo, steel-resonator mandolin, harmonica and fiddle, with rich bass tones added by cello. The band also treated the audience to some fascinating and unusual folk instruments including rattles, bones, kazoos, and quills. It was a showcase of lively rural American songs and tunes, in the styles that formed the immediate precursors to blues, country, and jazz…indeed, to most of American popular music. As Associate Librarian for Library Services Roberta Shaffer stated in introducing the group, the band “reinvigorates music dating back to the pre-Civil-War south, bringing back to life jigs and reels and work songs…it is truly terrific to have the Carolina Chocolate Drops with us!”




After the interview, they returned to their program of music, delighting all who heard them and, we hope, giving people insight into the ways in which archives and libraries can bring us not only learning, but joy.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops have been bringing joy to audiences now for about seven years. The band has its roots in an informal jam session held at the home of a celebrated old-time fiddler, the late Joe Thompson of Mebane, North Carolina. Starting in 2005, the three original Chocolate Drops, Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson, who had met on an internet forum about black banjo playing, began visiting Thompson on Thursday nights to play and learn music. Joe Thompson was then in his 80s, and his fiddling style went back for generations in his African-American family. He had learned his diverse repertoire during jam sessions held by local farmers on their back porches, after the day’s field work was done. He enjoyed passing his skills on to younger players like Giddens and Flemons in similar informal jams.








Several times on the Coolidge stage, Giddens showed off her excellent clog-dancing skills. Then, during the band’s last number, Flemons left his chair and did a frenetic dance, in which he tossed his guitar up in the air, passed it through his legs, and went down into a split. In some ways, this last bit of showmanship summed up what had gone before: it recalled the Vaudeville and Grand Ole Opry banjo antics of Uncle Dave Macon, but also cakewalks, hucklebuck, and the soul stepping of James Brown and all the rockers who followed. Just like the concert, it was country, folk, and blues, a little bit hokey but strangely hip, and traditional without being staid.

Videos
PBS Video
A PBS Crew attended the Library of Congress concert, and performed the following interviews. You can see some clips from our concert in the segment, too!
Watch Carolina Chocolate Drops' Sweet Old-time Sound on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
The videos below are provided as links by the Carolina Chocolate Drops website. The first provides clips and interviews related to the Grammy-winning album, Genuine Negro Jig. The second features a complete performance of one of the songs they performed at the Library of Congress.