Blind Boy Fuller mural coming to Wadesboro

WADESBORO — A mural of Wadesboro-native and legendary blues artist Blind Boy Fuller will go up in downtown Wadesboro courtesy at no cost to the town.

Town Manager David Edwards said that he met with a representative of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources who surprised him with the news that the state would fully fund the mural, which is expected to be a $50,000 investment. There will also be a kick-off event following the completion of the mural featuring live bands that will play Fuller’s music downtown.

Fuller was born in Wadesboro on July 10, 1907 and died in Durham on Feb. 13, 1941. Though he was one of the most recorded artists during his time, most of his work was produced over a six-year span, according to AllMusic.com. Still, he became one of the most influential artists of the region playing styles such as slide, ragtime, pop and blues.

“It’s extremely exciting,” Edwards told the Wadesboro Town Council this month. “There’s no telling how long in will take, it could take 3-4 months, it could take a year. It depends on the artist and his timeline.”

The artist will be Scott Nurkin, of The Mural Shop, who has been going around the state painting murals of famous musicians in the cities they were born in. For example, the City of Hamlet now has a towering mural of John Coltrane, who was born in Hamlet on Sept. 23, 1926. Nurkin’s murals include one of country music star Randy Travis in Marshville and of singer Roberta Flack, who won the 2020 Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement, in Black Mountain.

The mural will go up on the blank white side of the Belk building on North Green Street across from the courthouse, according to Edwards, which was picked in conjunction with Uptown Wadesboro.

The town will have to transfer this property from county’s name to the Town of Wadesboro’s during this process, and Edwards is confident that this will be done soon. As of early August, all that was left to do was finish processing seven years of tax returns, “then it will be a done deal,” he said, without any money having to change hands.