Henry Townsend

Blues pianist and guitarist Henry Townsend was born in 1909 in Shelby, MS. He became a major figure in the renowned "St. Louis blues" scene in the 1920s and 1930s, and was one of the musicians responsible for making St. Louis the blues center of the US in the pre-World War II period. He traveled from his Mississippi home to St. Louis in the late 1920s, and by 1930 was playing guitar and recording for such major labels as Columbia and Paramount. He learned to play piano from the legendary Roosevelt Sykes, and eventually struck out on his own as a guitarist and pianist, playing the "juke joints" and small nightclubs in the St. Louis area. He also acquired a reputation as a top session musician, and played on recordings with the top blues singers of the day. He continued working the nightclub circuit in the 1940s and 1950s, but his recording career had pretty much run its course by 1960. The blues/folk movement of the mid- to late 1960s revived his career, however, and he began performing at folk/blues festivals outside St. Louis, gaining an entirely new fan base, and signed with Adelphi Records. In 1979 he recorded what turned out to be his most critically acclaimed album, "Mule", for Nighthawk Records. In 1984 he was the subject of a documentary shown on PBS, "That's the Way I Do It".