Henry Townsend, 96, Had Blues For Seven Decades

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Blues guitarist Henry Townsend, who fled to St. Louis as a boy then stayed for a prolific career that spanned eight decades, died Sunday of pulmonary embolism in Grafton, Wis., where he was being honored. He was 96.

Townsend, who wrote and published hundreds of songs and accompanied musicians on hundreds more, began recording in 1929 and continued every decade since.

Townsend was honored as the last surviving artist on the old Paramount Blues record label. In the 1920s and 1930s, the label produced “race records” by black artists for black audiences.

Townsend grew up in Cairo, Ill., and ran away from home at age 9. While working as a shoe shine boy in St. Louis, he came to know a generation of piano players who had grown up on ragtime and were teaming up with guitarists to experiment with the blues.

He decided on a career in blues guitar after hearing budding bluesman Lonnie Johnson. In the 1930s, Townsend played with blues greats Roosevelt Sykes, Walter Davis and Robert Johnson at neighborhood parties and fish fries. “If you got $2 to play somewhere, you were doing well,” Townsend recalled.

Townsend and other blues musicians fell into near oblivion when the juke box replaced live music.

It wasn’t until the late 1950s, when the old blues “race records” were rediscovered during a growing folk revival, that Townsend, Lonnie Johnson, Big Joe Williams and others found renewed popularity. They toured the U.S. and Europe and found new audiences.


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