David K. Kirby

“In another well-written and authoritative study of roots music, Mark Kemp quotes a Crystal Lunsford as saying this: How come you think music’s so good in the South? It’s because black people and white people worked together to make it so damn good, that’s how come. There’s always been black people in white southern music and white people in black southern music. That’s the way it works down here. We wouldn’t have a southern rock & roll without the black influence, but then, I don’t think the blues and rock & roll would have been as accepted if it weren’t for white people down here who backed them and pushed them and recorded them. It took both races. Music has always been a universal thing down here. It goes beyond color. And that goes all the way back to slavery. By the way, Crystal Lunsford isn’t a professor or a music critic. As Kemp explains, she’s a third-generation employee of the Eveready plant in Asheboro, North Carolina who lives by herself in a trailer in rural Guilford County. If you’re the kind of expert who doesn’t look beyond the obvious, you might think the musical world is as segregated as the school systems were back in the day. But if you live out in the woods and you keep your eyes and ears open the way Crystal Lunsford does, then you know there’s more to the”
― David K. Kirby, Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll