A pioneering country blues singer and guitarist of the Piedmont school, Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen) started recording in the mid-1930s. The North Carolinan bluesman--who was indeed sightless--only recorded for a few years. He was imprisoned in 1940 for shooting his wife, and died the following year, of an illness possibly related to heavy drinking. Nevertheless, his work was enormously influential on his contemporaries as well as subsequent generations of blues players.