Category: 10. Music and dance; pow-wows; parades; scholarship pageants

     FUTC001. Futch, Michael. “Lowery's band had brush with stardom.”  Fayetteville Observer Sunday, 6 August 2000.

2 photographs

Publication type:  Newspaper article

Electronic access:  Fayetteville Observer Web site (www.fayettevillenc.com). Use Search.

Extensive, interestingly written account of Willie French Lowery's musical career.  Around 1969, Lowery's rock band Plant and See, based in Fayetteville, N.C., released an album on the White Whale Records label (which also recorded the Turtles, Zager and Evans, and the Rockets).  Also in 1969, Plant and See became Lumbee and recorded a single, "Streets of Gold," which received a good deal of air play and was ranked no.1 for awhile in some markets in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Philadelphia.

Lumbee relocated to Philadelphia, signed with Radnor Records, and released an album called Overdose (now a collector's item).  Radnor did not promote the album, so sales languished; the company later folded.

Other aspects of Lowery's music career include eighteen months as a guitarist with Clyde McPhatter; opening (with Plant and See) for Allman Brothers Band concerts; writing most of the original music for “Strike at the Wind!” and serving as music director for the outdoor drama; and writing songs for, and recording, the album Proud to be a Lumbee (the title song is used in Indian Education programs in Robeson County schools).

This annotation was written on: July 1, 2001; last edited on: June 11, 2002.

Home Page URL: lumbeebibliography.net