Joe Thompson (musician)
Joe Aquiler Thompson (December 9, 1918 – February 20, 2012) was an American old-time fiddle player who helped keep alive the black string band tradition. Born in Orange County, North Carolina, he learned fiddle from his father, John, and played with his uncle Walter, a banjo player. He started playing at seven and later formed a string band with his older brother Nate and cousin Odell, performing family songs passed down since before the Civil War, such as "Hook and Line" and "Cindy Gal."
After serving in a segregated unit in World War II, Thompson paused his music to work in a furniture factory as a rip-saw operator for 28 years. In 1973, musicologist Kip Lornell encouraged him and Odell to return as the New String Band Duo, touring the United States and abroad and playing at major festivals and venues like Carnegie Hall. In 1989 they released Old-Time Music from the North Carolina Piedmont on Global Village Records, and they received the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award in 1991 for preserving black folk music traditions.
When Odell died in 1994, Thompson briefly considered quitting but recorded a solo album, Family Traditions, for Rounder Records in 1999. A stroke in 2001 damaged his left arm, but after rehabilitation he returned to playing. In 2005 he began mentoring the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a modern African American string band. Thompson received the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2007 and performed at the Kennedy Center that year.
Thompson was married twice and had one son and six stepchildren. He died in a nursing home in Alamance County, North Carolina, in 2012 from pneumonia at age 93. Folklorist Wayne Martin said that Joe was probably the biggest force behind a national revival of string band music among young African American musicians.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 23:28 (CET).