Edward Heywood Sr. ( – April 2, 1942) was an American

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

and

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

pianist, popular in the 1910s and 1920s.

Biography

Eddie Heywood Sr. was a famed pianist of the 81 Theater on Decatur Street in

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

. He took over that role from Ed Butler around 1912. He recorded songs for

Okeh Records Okeh Records () is an American record label founded by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation, a phonograph supplier established in 1916, which branched out into phonograph records in 1918. The name was spelled "OkeH" from the initials of Ott ...

, playing solo and also accompanying performers such as Mamie Smith, Sara Martin,

Texas Alexander Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by bo ...

, and Butterbeans and Susie. He taught piano to his son, Eddie Heywood Jr. He first recorded songs for Okeh in New York in May 1923. In June of that year he accompanied Lucille Bogan on "The Pawn Shop Blues" in Atlanta, a song he had composed. This was the first time a black blues singer had been recorded outside New York or Chicago. He recorded "The Pawn Shop Blues" again in New York in September 1923 with

Martha Copeland Martha Copeland (c. 1891–1894; date of death unknown) was an American classic female blues singer. She recorded 34 songs between 1923 and 1928. She was promoted by Columbia Records as "Everybody's Mammy", but her records did not sell in the qu ...

on vocals.

References

External links

Eddie Heywood Sr.
at Discogs.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Heywood, Eddie Sr 1900s births 1942 deaths American jazz pianists American male jazz pianists Musicians from Atlanta Okeh Records artists 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American male musicians