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Traditional Stage at First Night Raleigh
Featuring Jeff Little, Wayne Henderson & Helen White
Part of Artsplosure's First Night Raleigh
Thursday, December 31, 7, 8, 9 & 10 p.m.
Sponsor: Tharrington Smith
First Presbyterian Church Sanctuary, downtown Raleigh
Buttons on sale Dec. 1: Admission Button is $9 in advance (ages 6 and up);
Day-of: Adults $12, $10 for ages 6-12

Enjoy a rare co-bill performance featuring Jeff Little, Wayne Henderson and Helen White on the Traditional Stage at First Night Raleigh. Henderson is a renowned finger-style Appalachian guitar player who received a National Heritage Award in 1995 from the National Endowment for the Arts. Helen White is an award-winning singer, multi-instrumentalist, and composer, and one of the founders of North Carolina's Junior Appalachian Musicians program. North Carolina native Jeff Little is a piano player who was influenced by the stringband music traditions of the Blue Ridge.

While Henderson and White perform together periodically, it was Little and Henderson who actually grew up in the same area, Boone, Virginia, and they have played together since they were kids, though they play together less frequently these days. Little's father had a guitar shop where Henderson would often come in to fix and build guitars.

Jeff Little

Pianist Jeff Little comes from Boone, North Carolina, in the heart of the Blue Ridge, one of America’s richest regions for traditional music. So it is perhaps not so surprising that he began playing piano at age five. His family ran Little’s Music Store in Boone, where musicians of all types frequently dropped by to play a tune. Among those was Doc Watson, a neighbor and close family friend whose music helped shape Little's unique piano style. While Watson was a keeper of deep Appalachian traditions, he also pioneered the flat-picking of intricate fiddle melodies on the guitar.

A professional musician since the age of 14, Little is experienced with traditional jazz, old-time, country, bluegrass, rockabilly, and blues. With a rack-mounted harmonica and vocals, he can also be a one-man show. He settled in Nashville for a while, where he worked as a session man in between stints on the road, and he also worked with a wide range of commercial country artists, most notably Keith Urban. In 2004, he returned to the Blue Ridge to direct the Music Industry Program at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, North Carolina.

Little often appears with Doc Watson and is a regular at the Merle Watson Memorial Festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. He has released three CDs and has been featured on National Public Radio several times. Little has taken his exciting piano style around the world on U.S. government goodwill tours, performing in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bahrain, Oman, France and Tanzania. Other performances include The Smithsonian Institution, The National Folk Festival, and The National Council For The Traditional Arts "American Piano Masters."

With few exceptions, the piano does not play a prominent part in Appalachian music, and it is rarely the lead instrument. But Little is an exception – and a remarkable one. His distinctive two-handed style, much influenced by the mountain flatpicked guitar tradition, is breathtaking in its speed, precision and clarity.

(adapted from The National Council For The Traditional Arts)

Visit Jeff Little's website

Wayne Henderson
Wayne Henderson's top-notch finger-picking is a source of great pleasure and pride to his friends, family, and neighbors in Grayson County, Virginia; his guitar playing has also been enjoyed at Carnegie Hall, in three national tours of "Masters of the Steel-String Guitar," and in seven nations in Asia. In addition to his reputation as a guitarist, Henderson is a luthier of great renown. He is a recipient of a 1995 National Heritage Award presented by the National Endowment for the Arts. He produces about 20 instruments a year, mostly guitars; he is almost as well-known for the mandolins he has made.

Doc Watson, a good friend who sometimes stops at Hednerson's shop in Rugby, Virginia, to pick a few tunes, owns a Henderson mandolin. He said, "That Henderson mandolin is as good as any I've had my hands on. And that's saying a lot, because I've picked up some good ones."

Some of Henderson's instruments are intricately decorated, but they are most respected for their volume, tone and resonance. Blues guitarist John Cephas said that Wayne Henderson "is probably the most masterful guitar maker in this whole United States." There is a waiting list for Henderson's guitars made up of the "famous (and not-so-famous)."

In 1995, the Wayne C. Henderson Music Festival and Guitar Competition was established in 1995 to express appreciation for this "living legend." A portion of the proceeds from the Festival are placed into a scholarship fund to aid local young musicians in continuing their educations. Above and beyond his great talents as a musician and luthier, Henderson is known as a "friend to everyone" and shares his talents and knowledge unselfishly.

Visit Wayne Henderson's website

Helen White

Helen White is the founder, president and director of Junior Appalachian Musicians (JAM), an educational outreach bringing the Piedmont region’s musical heritage to students in 14 counties and 3 states. White is a well travelled multi-instrumentalist, tunesmith and teacher of old time music. She has worked as a community organizer, juvenile probation and elementary school counselor in northwest North Carolina and southwest Virginia for more than 25 years, giving her privileged insight into the challenging aspects of life in these mountains. JAM represents a marriage of her love for traditional music with her advocacy for youth, families and communities. She currently works as a guidance counselor in an elementary school in Allegheny, NC and teaches fiddle workshops across the country.

White was born in Washington, DC, but her family moved to Durham when she was only one year old. She has lived in the Mouth of Wilson, Virginia, area for the past 20 years. She plays fiddle, mandolin, old time banjo, and guitar.

She took violin lessons as a child and began playing old time music in her early 20s. She learned old time playing in the Upper Skagit River Valley in Washington state from native North Carolinians (primarily from Avery County) who moved there when the logging industry folded in North Carolina. White was "taken under [their] wing" as a "fellow tarheel." As her love of the music grew, she began traveling with a tape recorder. When she heard a tune she liked, she’d ask the fiddler to play the tune slowly into her recorder. A self-described "hippy," White worked seasonal jobs in the area and lived in a "shack in the woods about a mile off the road." During the off season, she would "sit in [her] shelter in the woods learning fiddle tunes."

From this "hodge podge" beginning of musicians and styles, her primary influences became the music and musicians of the Mouth of Wilson area as she lived, worked, and played with them for 20 years.

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