Cora Reid Phillips  (1907–2000)
Blues Guitarist
Dulatown, NC

“I learned to play sitting on Poppa’s knee when I was three or four years old. In our family we played together every time we got a chance. Shucks, we’d want to get up before breakfast and start our music.”

Cora Phillips could make an apple pie in her wood stove as easily as she played the music she learned from her father in the times she and her seven brothers and sisters played with him on the porches of Dulatown. She was not only a good cook and a good musician, but a good talker, exceptional in the family of musicians who let their music speak for them. “When we played,” she remembered, “then neighbors couldn’t sit still.”

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