Flora Molton

Flora E. Molton (née Rollins; March 12, 1908 – May 31, 1990) was a street singer and slide guitar player who performed gospel and blues music in Washington, D.C., from the 1940s to shortly before her death.

She played slide guitar in the "bottleneck" style commonly employed by rural blues musicians, and she played the harmonica and tambourine.

Born partially blind due to cataracts, Molton grew up in Virginia.

Her father was a minister, and she was influenced early by her religious upbringing and by blues musicians such as Bessie Smith.

When Molton began performing on the streets of Washington in her thirties, she played blues music.

Over the years, she moved away from blues songs, instead performing gospel music and what she called "truth" music, which involved themes of perseverance through life's struggles.

Molton was often accompanied in her street singing by musicians like Phil Wiggins who had success as mainstream artists, and she sometimes performed with groups under the name Flora Molton and the Truth Band.

Fellow musicians noted that the structure of Molton's music was often defined more by her singing than by her guitar.

Molton was born Flora Rollins on March 12, 1908, in Louisa County, Virginia.

Her parents were William and Sally Rollins.

She was partially blind at birth.

Though she thought that she would be able to read large print, her schoolteachers taught her from memory.

At the age of eight, Molton underwent surgery for cataracts, and her vision improved slightly.

Though she was still discouraged from reading, by her teens she was comfortable reading large print.

Molton was influenced by religion from an early age.

Her father spent most of his time working in West Virginia, both as a minister and as a coal miner.

Molton's mother, an organist, stayed behind in Virginia to raise her children.

While she listened to blues singers like Bessie Smith and Sippie Wallace as a child, she also learned the accordion, the instrument her father played.

She was baptized at age seven and she began preaching at 17.

A few years later, Molton became a member of the Holiness Church and started a ministry out of her home.

Supporting two children, Molton found that she could not make enough money by preaching.

In 1937, looking for work, she moved to Washington, D.C., where her brother, Robert Rollins, had begun pastoring the Florida Avenue Baptist Church.

Molton soon took up the guitar, and she began singing on the streets in 1942.

Playing her guitar, singing, and tapping a tambourine with her foot, Molton occupied the corner of F Street NW and 7th Street NW.

She attached a plastic pail to her guitar where passers-by left money.

She later incorporated a mount for a harmonica, a microphone and a portable amplifier.

Molton sometimes attracted the attention of law enforcement, who did not want her performing on the street, but the police stopped bothering her in the mid-1960s.

Molton did not make scheduled performances until 1963, when she met a musician named Ed Morris, who helped her to arrange gigs at music festivals and other venues.

In 1969, when her usual location was affected by construction for the Washington Metro, Molton moved to the corner of 11th Street NW and F Street NW near the Woodward & Lothrop department store.

Molton sang the blues in her early years on the streets.

Music scholar Bernice Johnson Reagon said that a blues sound was still apparent in her music in the mid-1970s; she said that, unlike most gospel music, a hymnal structure was absent from Molton's songs.

Molton's main concerns were not about structure, but about singing lyrics she viewed as sacred rather than secular.

Molton wrote an anti-war piece, "Sun's Gonna Shine in Vietnam Someday", which was later renamed "Sun's Gonna Shine Some Day".

Over the years, various musicians accompanied Molton, and these collaborations were sometimes carried out under the name of Flora Molton and the Truth Band.

Members of the Truth Band included Phil Wiggins, a blues singer later known as part of Cephas & Wiggins.

"I was so young, in a wilder, different life then," she said in 1985.

Later, she said she no longer performed the blues, describing her music as a mixture of gospel songs and what she called "truth" music, which dealt with the struggles of daily life.

She appeared at events such as the Philadelphia Folk Festival, performed at the Library of Congress, and went on a tour of Europe in 1987.

Molton is the subject of the documentary Spirit and Truth Music, and she appears in the documentary Blues Houseparty.

There are historical markers dedicated to her in Washington, D.C., and on U.S. Route 250 in Virginia.