Bishop Dready Lewis Manning

(b. 1934-d. 2017)

Everyone said he was the best guitar player around Lake Gaston in Northeastern North Carolina.

I was led to his little compound by a neighbor who knew I was looking for older black guitar players and singers. People–even other guitar players–raved about Dready. He was the best blues player in four counties. But her was never home when I stopped by. I finally got a phone number for him, and even that was not a quick fix to getting up with him.

In the spring of 1987, after months of chasing him, I finally caught Bishop Manning on the phone and we arranged a meeting at his home/church compound near Roanoke Rapids, NC.

After he married, like many rural Blues players, Dready gave up the joints and moved his chops and musical focus into the church. In this case, his own church.

Being an enterprising and talented performer, Dready declared himself a Bishop, started having prayer meetings in the homes of local friends and acquaintances during which he would lead the little services, sing, play, and take up collections.

After a while Bishop Manning and his flock had the money they needed to begin to erect a cinder block church on a poured concrete slab on his own lot next to his trailer office and home, and what I call the Church of Dready was born and raised.

When I met him there, knocking on the trailer office door with the North Carolina Folklife Section’s Nagra recorder, a video camera, and my guitar in tow, Bishop Manning suggested we go into the sanctuary.

I set up my equipment to interview and record him. And in turn, he set up his equipment to record me. This was not going to be the White Man with technology documenting a Black man. We were going to be documenting each other. I was delighted that he flattened the dynamic, had his own gear, and insisted that I play him something, too, and talk about my life, before he played and talked about his.

This is what equality looked like that day. We liked each other immediately.

Dready Lewis Manning was born to Neal and Jeanie Mangum Manning on August 10, 1934.

At the age of 27, as related in his obituary, Dready was called to be born again under the leadership of Mother Lillie Williams. Six months later, he was called to hold prayer meetings in homes, “which led him into pastorship.”

Continuing, his obituary said:

“He preached in a store front building and outdoor tents” until his members and he purchased land in Roanoke Rapids and built St. Mark Holiness Church. Bishop stood in the Vineyard for many years preaching and teaching the Word of God. Truly a man compassionate about the souls of people, Bishop recorded music for many groups, including “Bishop Manning and Family…He broadcasted on radio stations in Roanoke Rapids and Scotland Neck, North Carolina. Many listeners also tuned their televisions for Bishop’s Sunday Morning Message on the local television station in Roanoke Rapids.”

“In 2003, Bishop Manning was presented with the North Carolina Arts Council Folk Heritage Award at the governor’s mansion in Raleigh. On April 8, 2003, former Mayor Drewry Beale proclaimed Dready Manning Day due to his accomplishments in the community.”

In that early spring rendezvous in 1987, Bishop told me about his early church conversion and the development of his flock and church. And when he played gospel tunes, they were suffused–as were the gospel songs of Reverend Gary Davis–with the figures and skill developed in the juke joints and house parties of his youth.

By 1993, I managed to get Bishop Manning to come and join me at the Eno River Festival in Durham NC. This is a festival nearly designed to kill older performers because they set it on the calendar around the hottest time of the year, July 4th, and many of the stages face the sun (I mean, why not Labor Day when the heat might at least have a chance to moderate?).

Bishop Manning turned up for the festival in a three-piece polyester suit, a ruffled tuxedo shirt, a matching hat and bow tie–a commanding outfit that was sure to present a problem.

We were situated on a stage down by the river facing the mid-afternoon sun and began our forty-five minute set, with me introducing and following Dready. Twenty minutes in, he turned to me, sweat pouring off his face and said he wasn’t sure he could go on.

I looked at him there in the full sun and told him not to worry, I’d finish the set, to get get some of those clothes off, loosen his tie, and get some water. Which he did.

Luckily, he didn’t collapse with heatstroke, but that was where he was headed. It caused me to wonder exactly what the festival organizers were thinking putting a senior performer in full sun on one of the hottest weekends of the year. Were they purposely trying to kill him?

I had a love-hate relationship with the festival anyway because of its place on the calendar at the height of summer. It was brutal even for the hippies who played it without socks in sandals and jeans. But for senior performers who took their costuming seriously as a sign of respect for themselves, the music, and their audiences, it bordered on being lethal.

There was a stage in full shade most of the day, but they didn’t put us there. Grrr.

Please bring this to the attention of the people who put on the Festival for the Eno. Hopefully, they won’t ever actually injure a senior musician with such feckless programming assignments. It was a close one.

In the early 2000s, my wife Barb and I stopped by unannounced on our way through that part of North Carolina. Dready wasn’t home, but his wife Marie welcomed us into the house, gave us some sweet tea, and chatted us up hoping Dready might come home. He did not and we left her with our fond regards and thanks.

Bishop Dready L. Manning was a force of nature and, frankly, I would have joined his church at least to help him get the building up and maybe play with him, if I could've. And I would have been welcome in it.

This is the thing about Dready–and about the black church generally–the only part of the Old Testament that they seem to love is the “Let My People Go” bit around Moses and the Romans holding the Jews in slavery. They seem to skip right over the god of vengeance and judgement and land fully in the New Testament gospel of love.

It is a religious stance driven by hundreds of years of exclusion and repression in this hemisphere. That these people can love anyone, let alone a white person, is simply shocking. And, of course, Christ came to correct the mistakes in the Old Testament teaching about a God of love, not vengeance and judgement. Christians should heartily ignore most of the Old Testament, but there is no money in the New.

May blessings follow Bishop Manning’s memory.

You will find his recordings available like Gospel Train and many others online. A simple search on his name will bring you to his work.

Take a moment, turn up the sound, and join me in celebrating this remarkable man: a fine musician, a generous preacher, and a good friend.

Scott Ainslie

Rochester MN Hotel

March 9, 2025