Craig Legg's Alabama Roots Music Trading Card Series

Craig Legg’s Alabama Roots Music Trading Card Series is a collection of 300-plus individual paintings by Birmingham artist Craig Legg, devoted to a diverse range of Alabama “roots” music traditions, pioneers, and practitioners. The exhibit was unveiled on January 1, 2024, at East Village Arts of Birmingham, where it was on public display for three months.

The exhibit received funding from the Southern Music Research Center’s “Art of Music” series, a program launched in 2023 to provide support to visual artists whose work engages the musical legacies of the South. During the show’s run at East Village Arts, the SMRC collaborated with Legg to host three community “Paint Ins,” inviting the general public to “Help Paint Alabama Music History”; the resulting community paintings will also be archived on this site soon. The Southern Music Research Center is grateful to the Alabama State Council on the Arts for their generous grant support of this initiative.

All works in this collection are copyright Craig Legg and may not be reproduced without permission. For permission requests, or to order a print, please email contact@southernmusicresearch.org.  

At the opening of this exhibit, Legg wielded a magic wand / conductor’s baton and channeled the spirit of Birmingham educator, bandleader, and legendary “Maker of Musicians” John T. “Fess” Whatley, lecturing the gathered crowd on some of Alabama music’s lesser-known chapters and heroes. “Document, document, document!” he instructed his audience, urging them to find their own means of recording and preserving our cultural past. Legg’s own extensive survey of Alabama roots music is, in fact, only one piece of his own broader efforts to document the musical life of his state. Other recent Craig Legg projects include a History of Birmingham Jazz (in 100+ pieces) and the 300-piece History of Birmingham Rock and Roll, which will be made available in a forthcoming book; he has also devoted two smaller series to spaceways bandleader Sun Ra and the members of his band, the Arkestra. Nonmusical series by Legg include similarly sprawling visual histories of baseball, world literature, the World Games, and Alabama college football.  

Paintings in this series are made with acrylic paint on Masonite board. Most are small — from 5x7 to 9x12 inches — though some larger paintings may range up to 22x30. The series takes inspiration from the baseball trading cards Legg collected in his youth, offering a glimpse of the subjects in action and providing supplementary text (names, dates, stats, etc.). Legg has very generously donated the original paintings in this series to the Southern Music Research Center; our plan is to open a public archive and community space in Birmingham, Alabama, where this full series and other items, art, and artifacts will be on permanent display.

The Southern Music Research Center considers it a great privilege and honor to preserve and present this visual-documentary feast in our online archive, and we encourage visitors to follow their curiosities to learn more about the artists featured in these works.

For more on Craig Legg, see this short film by Alabama Public Television's Monograph series.