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<br /> June 21, 2000
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<br /> Local filmmakers capture Trice s life in music
<br /> capture the story of Trice's life and in lament and yearning to effect
<br /> By R.J. Beatty P rY g Y g
<br /> i The News of Orange County music in their new documentary emotional release — 'an expression " '
<br /> film, Shine On: Richard Trice and of the faith-of-Job belief that "the a
<br /> When one delves deep into the the Bull City Blues. "There's some sun's gonna shine in my back door,
<br /> j vast, swirling sea of American mu- things you can't talk about that he someday:' It was the sort of pre- - w •* €,
<br /> r art t •
<br /> sic, one inevitably ends up in the wants you to do." served first-person testimony that
<br /> South — among the bluegrass and- Shine On, released last month in Jamie Hysjulien, blues fan, key-
<br /> country music of farms, fields and a public screening at Durham's boardist and Carolina Friends
<br /> barn-raisings, New Orleans jazz Carolina Theatre, is on one level school teacher, had been looking
<br /> and Memphis soul, R&B and Banc- Dalsheimer and Hysjulien's portrait for upon teaching his first class on
<br /> > tified gospel of both black and of one mans life in music — a ca- the blues at Carolina Friends inIf
<br /> e
<br /> white strains, the country and elec- reer that led Trice to interact and 1997.
<br /> i tric blues and boogie that eventu- play the blues with such regional The class, said Hysjulien, was a �. �
<br /> ally would give birth to a new and national figures as Sonny kind of fusion between the Pied- ' "yJ rr+ '
<br /> R!
<br /> sound called rock `n roll — all Terry, Brownie McGhee, Blind mont blues of Durham and Orange4 i
<br /> I flowing together in a musical pas- Boy Fuller and the Rev. Gary County in the 1930s and 40s and - s •„ � ��, , ,��,,� _ •
<br /> tiche as a soundtrack to the con- Davis — but on another a wider- local history from the time, with
<br /> flicting strains of the 201d century, ranging survey of life in Durham Hysjulien taking the students out ',, .- 141
<br /> the uneasy questions of war and and Orange County in the Great and about in the community to do
<br /> peace anger and compassion re- Depression and World War 11 era. field research on how much things
<br /> i bellion and sacrifice, the sacred and The times of Richard Trice draw a have changed between now and . } '
<br /> 1
<br /> profane. portrait of hard work and little then. At some point, said H s u
<br /> And somewhere in the middle money, good friends juke joint lien the class learned that Richard "
<br /> was Richard Trice, the Piedmont parties at which wine, whiskey and Trice, a blues slide-guitar player of
<br /> bluesman born in 1917 to an Or- blues music flow freely, and the some local renown who had kept
<br /> an a County sharecropping family, day-in day-out struggle to turn company with the likes of Davis
<br /> ;> •`=w.a. �4��, l�i
<br /> who spent much of his life helping one's way the good fortune that, so and Fuller, was still alive and living "
<br /> to lay the foundations of a thriving often for so many, remains a mad- in the LaSalle Health Center onFilmmakers Jamie Hysjulien (left) and Kenny Dalsheimer recently released Shine on:Richard Trice and the
<br /> midcentury Durham blues tradition, deningly elusive dream. LaSalle Street, in the heart of the Bull Cily Blues, a documentary about local Piedmont bluesman Richard Trice (pictured at left with fellow
<br /> and who ended his days believing The essential feelings of this time city he had known and loved for musician John Dee Holeman). Photos courtesy of Steve Whitsitt (above) and Lorraine Tipaldi.
<br /> that the Lord had called him to and place were encoded in the half a century.
<br /> something more. songs themselves — a psychological "We'd heard a rumor that he nership between Hysjulien, the racing in Rougemont. By and large nursing home for over 15 years,
<br /> "God is like this," Trice ex- fly preserved in the rhythmic, shuf- was, you know, a little out of historian and blues buff who knew a self-taught filmmaker, -Dal- losing both legs to illness as he
<br /> plained to filmmakers Kenny Dal- fling amber of the blues, an art sorts," said David Hughes, one of Trice well by this point, and Dal- sheimer augmented the film classes waited out the remainder of his
<br /> sheimer and Jamie Hysjulien, who form that makes a specialty of us- Hysjulien's students who visited sheimer, Hysjulien's former Caro- he did take (including one at UNC- , days, looking for a sign from God
<br /> Trice with his class and on his own lina Friends colleague turned inde- Chapel Hill with Barbara Trent and that would turn his life around.
<br /> throughout the next year, eventu-
<br /> ,,.. g Y pendent filmmaker who possessed David Kasper, directors of the The filmmakers started out with the
<br /> y - j ��,,,.-,• ,...:; all counting the then-octogenarian the camera and editing skills to Academy Award-winning docu- intent of focusing on Trice s music,
<br /> Trice as a valued friend. "But we make the project a reality. mentary The Panama Deception) said Dalsheimer, but once the pro-
<br /> got there and he was doing fine; he "Once 1 got to meet [Trice], I with one-on-one study with area ject got going, they more or less let
<br /> was always happy -for the com- wanted to do something to preserve filmmakers to develop and polish Trice tell his own story, in his own
<br /> „ his story," �.
<br /> p y. ry, said Hysjulien. 1 met his own filmmaking style. way. The finished film has no nar-
<br /> ' Out of these visits with the for- up with Ken, who happened to be And, like Hysjulien, Dalsheimer rator; Trice essentially tells his
<br /> ; . mer musician grew the idea for finishing up one project and was was intrigued by the prospect of story as Dalsheimer and Hysjulien
<br /> Shine On, which Dalsheimer de- looking to start working on an- telling Richard Trice's story. take him out into the community,
<br /> r ' nT scribes as his and Hysjulien's at- other." "1 was impressed b his memo visiting laces around Durham and
<br /> P Y memory, g P
<br /> # 1 r tempt to capture some of the feel of Dalsheimer, who left Carolina and the fact that he was really the Orange County that Trice had
<br /> Durham and Orange County in the Friends in 1996 to pursue film- last of a breed," said Dalsheimer. known and loved well during his
<br /> mid-201h century through the expe- making full-time, had previously "We wrote some grant applications, formative days.
<br /> 'rierices and memories of Trice, a experimented with the "anthropo- and the project just took off." Visiting the site of the old Trice
<br /> f fixture in black Durham's Hayti logical adventure" style of film in By the time Jamie Hysjulien and • family home on Mt. Sinai Road
<br /> business district through the war Go Fast, Turn Let: Yoices rom the
<br /> - g f f his students began visiting Trice in
<br /> years and the heyday of the city's Orange County Speedway, his 1997 the LaSalle Street Health Center See Trice Page 4B
<br /> -if+i»' "'= � " blues scene. It was a timely part- documentary detailing stock-car the aged bluesman had been in the r
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