Sugar Hill’s Barry Poss Passes

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Barry Poss

Barry Poss, the founder of the esteemed roots-music label Sugar Hill Records, died this week in North Carolina at age 79 following a battle with cancer.

Sugar Hill is best known as the home of a who’s-who of bluegrass music. It was also a launchpad for the careers of Marty Stuart, Ricky Skaggs, Nickel Creek and The Whites. At various times, Rodney Crowell, Dolly Parton, Kathy Mattea, Willie Nelson, Connie Smith, Johnny Paycheck, Sweethearts of the Rodeo, Sara Evans, Don Williams, Lee Ann Womack, Wanda Jackson and Uncle Kracker recorded for Sugar Hill, as did such troubadours as Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Pat Alger, Jewel, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen and Jesse Winchester.

Recordings on the imprint have won 13 Grammy Awards in the bluegrass, country and folk categories, including two for Parton’s efforts and two for collections by The Nashville Bluegrass Band.

Barry Lyle Poss was born in rural Ontario, but moved to Toronto as a boy. After college at the city’s York University, he moved to North Carolina in 1968 to pursue a degree in sociology from Duke University. While he was a graduate student, he attended the Union Grove Fiddlers Gathering and fell in love with traditional sounds.

Poss went to work for the Virginia bluegrass labels County Records and Rebel Records. He learned the roots-music business from County’s Dave Freeman. He and Freeman co-founded Sugar Hill in 1978. The label’s first record was by Boone Creek, which featured Skaggs and Jerry Douglas, both of whom would go on to issue solo LPs for the label. Douglas also went on to produce a number of Sugar Hill’s other artists. Poss took full control of Sugar Hill Records in 1980 and moved the company to Durham, North Carolina.

The firm quickly became the home to such stellar bluegrass bands as The Osborne Brothers, The Bluegrass Cardinals, The Country Gentlemen, Hot Rize, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, The Seldom Scene, New Grass Revival and The Del McCoury Band. Noted for its classy graphics, excellent distribution and musical integrity, Sugar Hill also attracted Tim O’Brien, Peter Rowan, Sam Bush, Chris Hillman, Carl Jackson and other influential stylists.

Barry Poss was known as a good-humored, warm-hearted record executive who had a hands-off attitude about his artists’ creativity. In the studio, he produced with a light touch, embracing the musicians’ judgement about their own music. He relinquished more power than most label chiefs. In short, he offered what recording artists all yearn for, artistic control.

He said that he wanted people to see the Sugar Hill name and trust that any record on the label would be worthwhile. John Prine said he was inspired by Poss to form his own company, Oh Boy Records.

As Sugar Hill grew, Barry Poss embraced a wider vision of what later became known as Americana music. Artists as diverse as The Austin Lounge Lizards, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Jonathan Edwards, Pat Green, Jeff Bridges, The Red Clay Ramblers, James McMurtry, Joey + Rory, Tom Paxton, Doc Watson and Maura O’Connell recorded for the label.

In 1998, Poss sold Sugar Hill to The Welk Music Group. He remained with the label as its president and in 2002 was named its chairman. He moved Sugar Hill to Nashville in 2007, but did not move with it. Sugar Hill continues to operate as an imprint today.

In 2015, the label was acquired by the Concord Music Group, the world’s leading independent music company. This umbrella firm has also absorbed such imprints as Vanguard, Stax, Rounder, Fantasy, Milestone, Prestige, Specialty, Vee Jay, Razor & Tie, Riverside, Fania, Easy Eye Sound and several other notable firms.

Barry Poss was in the 1985 group that forged the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) and was a founding board member of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, located in Owensboro, Kentucky. He also served on the boards of the Carolina Theater, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, Merle Fest and the North Carolina Folklife Institute, among others.

He was given a Distinguished Achievement Award by IBMA in 1998. The Americana Music Association presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. Charmed by his label’s name, Parton wrote a song called “Sugar Hill” and included on her 2002 Halos & Horns album for the company.

“Barry gave me a sense of direction and opened doors for me when all others were shut,” recalled Hillman. Even more succinctly, Keen said, “Barry Poss is one of a kind. There is no other.”

The executive was modest about his legacy. “I used to joke that I had the perfect qualifications for being in the music business,” Poss said. “I had no business training…no formal music background, either. But I teach Sociology of Deviant Behavior.” His business plan was simple: “Keep it real. Know and love what you record. And put it out into the world.”

Barry Poss died on Tuesday, May 13, in Durham. He is survived by wife Michele Pas, sons Aaron and Jonathan, four grandchildren and many cousins, friends, relations and colleagues. Funeral services were held yesterday, May 15, at Beth El Synagogue, followed by burial at Durham Hebrew Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions in his name to Beth El Synagogue, to the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina or to a charity of your choice.

Robert K Oermann
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