The North Carolina Music Hall of Fame has announced its 2026 class of inductees – and Orange County is well represented this year.
The Hall of Fame’s 2026 class includes Hillsborough jazz legend Billy Strayhorn and the 1970s band Arrogance, a founding figure in Chapel Hill’s bustling music scene.
Born in 1915, Billy Strayhorn spent much of his early childhood in Hillsborough before moving to Pittsburgh. It was in Pittsburgh that he first met fellow jazz legend Duke Ellington and forged a partnership that would help define the sound of American jazz music (though Strayhorn himself described their style not as jazz but “beyond category”). It was Strayhorn who composed songs like “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Satin Doll,” “Lush Life,” “Chelsea Bridge,” and many more. Ellington got most of the public attention (an occasional source of tension), but he was always quick to acknowledge Strayhorn’s vital role, famously saying: “Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine.” Their collaboration lasted from 1938 until Strayhorn’s death from cancer in 1967, at the age of just 51.
Bill Strayhorn, as photographed by William P. Gottlieb between 1946 and 1948. (Photo via the United States Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs division.)
Strayhorn was also a personal profile in courage: he was a vocal supporter of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, and he was also openly gay at a time when LGBTQ people were subject to extreme discrimination, attacks, and frequent arrests. And musically, his reputation has only grown since his death: Strayhorn today is frequently recognized as one of the greatest jazz composers of all time.
Click here for a longer biography of Billy Strayhorn.
Arrogance formed in the fall of 1969 in a UNC dorm room – room 301 of Aycock Hall, to be exact, where new roommates Robert Kirkland and Mike Greer were joined by fellow student Don Dixon for an impromptu FDOC jam session. Kirkland and Dixon quickly forged a close musical partnership that served as the driving force of the band that emerged. Arrogance initially experimented with hard rock (evidenced by their 1970 debut single “Black Death”) before settling into the Southern folk-rock sound common on 1970s radio. The band released five albums – peaking with 1976’s “Rumors” – before going their separate ways in the early 1980s.
Arrogance never achieved major chart success, but their enduring influence manifests itself in three ways. Don Dixon used Arrogance as a launching pad for his own legendary studio career: as a producer of R.E.M.’s early albums (among dozens of other credits), he’s now known as one of the key figures in shaping the jangle-pop sound that helped define the 1980s. Arrogance also pioneered the “indie” approach to music distribution, releasing most of their albums independently – and blazing a trail for later musicians to do the same without relying on major labels. And as they developed a reputation for impressive live shows, Arrogance became a staple at a new venue called Cat’s Cradle (also founded in 1969), thus helping establish Chapel Hill as a rock-music mecca while also influencing countless other local bands and artists to write and produce their own original music. In many ways, Chapel Hill’s present-day music scene can trace its origin directly back to that Aycock Hall dorm room in the fall of 1969.
Arrogance circa 1980. (Photo via Don Dixon/Taken by Chris Seward.)
Arrogance recreates their promo photo 20 years later for the reunion show. From left to right: Scott Davison, Marty Stout, Robert Kirkland, Don Dixon and Rod Abernethy. (Photo via Don Dixon/Taken by Chris Seward.)
Billy Strayhorn and Arrogance will be officially inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame Thursday, October 15, at the Charles Mack Citizen Center in Mooresville. Other inductees include female hip-hop pioneer MC SHA-ROCK of Wilmington; Go-Go musician Gregory “Sugar Bear” Elliott of Red Springs; and one more Triangle-based music legend, Barry Poss of Durham, who founded the famed bluegrass/Americana label Sugar Hill Records. (One more North Carolina music legend will also receive a lifetime-achievement award: Parliament/Funkadelic founder George Clinton, who hails from Kannapolis.)
Visit NorthCarolinaMusicHallOfFame.org for tickets and more information.
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Orange County Musicians Billy Strayhorn, Arrogance To Be Inducted Into NC Music Hall of Fame Chapelboro.com.
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