Many people care about the history of the place they call home, but some people devote themselves to it. Kinston’s Choci Gray is one of them.
Choci Gray, artist, Chitlin Circuit host and owner of the 1901 Building, a venue in Kinston, NC.
For over half a decade, Gray has hosted the Chitlin Circuit: an annual community event that features stellar performances by some of the town’s most celebrated Black musicians.
Earl Iames, curator, archivist and historic preservationist, emceeing the 1901 Building’s annual Chitlin Circuit event in Kinston, NC.
Gray’s Chitlin Circuit event hearkens back to the time of segregation, when Black entertainers were forced to leave white clubs immediately after their performances. These entertainers would head to a Black-owned venue in the same town to perform, eat, and be in fellowship. This network of venues was called the Chitlin Circuit.
Legendary saxophonist Maceo Parker, an architect of funk music who's played with James Brown, Prince, and Parliament, prepares to perform in his hometown. Kinston, NC.
Many of America’s most celebrated musicians—Ella Fitzgerald, B. B. King, Duke Ellington—worked the Chitlin Circuit, and North Carolina had its share of such venues. Gray, a Black artist and owner of a venue (The 1901 Building) herself, feels strongly about celebrating the North Carolina musicians who are a part of that story.
Gray was raised just outside of Kinston in a rural community called La Grange. She grew up listening to the music of James Brown, but didn’t learn until later in life that many of the players who crafted his sound—Nat Jones; Maceo Parker; his brother, Melvin Parker; and Dick Knight—were from Kinston. These players helped Brown develop a style that the world now knows as funk, and they are among many gifted Black musicians from eastern North Carolina who are credited with shaping modern American music.
Three North Carolina Heritage Awardees: Bill Myers, Dick Knight, and Maceo Parker on stage together for the first time.
2020’s Chitlin Circuit featured performances by Maceo Parker and Dick Knight, and by another North Carolina Heritage Award recipient—the jazz musician and band leader Bill Myers, of Wilson, who received the award in 2014.
“This is historical, by itself,” Gray said, in an interview on the eve of the event. “It's the Chitlin Circuit, and it’s on Black-owned premises, which is the part that makes it authentic. I never would’ve believed that the same musicians I grew up listening to and dancing off of would be coming here. I feel like history is taking place, and I’m a part of it. That’s a story.”
Story produced for Come Hear North Carolina.