Superchunk never hit it big, but their label Merge Records did, scoring chart-topping records and an Album Of The Year Grammy Award with Montreal’s Arcade Fire. They were just the latest and greatest label in local history, going back to Colonial Records, which released Andy Griffith’s 1953 hit routine “What It Was, Was Football.” In Durham, Sugar Hill Records became one of the top bluegrass labels in the 1980s. But while other labels came and went, Merge was the one with the most staying power of all.

As a crossroads state, North Carolina’s population has more than doubled since 1970. Musical immigrants move here for the same reasons as everyone else: quality of life, cost of living, scenery, inspiration. The influx includes everyone from jazz giant Branford Marsalis to electronic inventor Bob Moog. It runs two ways, however, with African-Americans fleeing the Jim Crow South for brighter futures up North -- Nina Simone, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk among them.

After forming as a beach band called Stax of Gold, Nantucket emerged as North Carolina’s top mainstream rock act of the 1970s. At a time when few acts in the state could attract the record industry, Nantucket signed to the major label Epic Records and had a good run through the 1970s and into the ’80s as a hard-working touring act. They also never completely left beach music behind, with horns and R&B a part of their sound, creating a template for North Carolina bands playing overtly mainstream music even when it was out of fashion.

Charles Cleveland “Charlie” Poole was a banjo-playing mill laborer who lived an eventful life before passing at age 39 from one alcohol binge too many. He was arguably the most important musician to emerge from the stringbands populating mill towns across the North Carolina Piedmont -- a working-class hero as well as an important crossroads figure in the 1920s evolution of old-time music into what became bluegrass and country music, recording songs that remain bluegrass-festival standards to this day. And yet he has never been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

During the 1990s, record companies were looking for the next big alternative rock breakout and focused a lot of attention on Chapel Hill, where bands like Superchunk, Archers of Loaf, and Polvo resided. Two Chapel Hill bands would hit it big, but they were the last two anyone would have expected -- the hot-jazz band Squirrel Nut Zippers and piano-pop trio Ben Folds Five.