Henry "Mule" Townsend (born Henry Jesse James Townsend; October 27, 1909 – September 24, 2006) 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 ...

singer, guitarist and pianist.

Career

Townsend was born Henry Jesse James Townsend in

Shelby, Mississippi Shelby is a city in Bolivar County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 2,229 at the 2010 census, down from 2,926 in 2000. The town of Shelby was established in 1853 by Tom Shelby, who had purchased a block of land there from the fede ...

to Allen and Omelia Townsend. His father was a blues musician who played guitar and accordion. When Henry was young, his family moved near Cairo, Illinois. Henry left home at the age of nine because of his abusive father and

hobo A hobo is a migrant worker in the United States. Hoboes, tramps and bums are generally regarded as related, but distinct: a hobo travels and is willing to work; a tramp travels, but avoids work if possible; and a bum neither travels nor works. E ...

ed his way to

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

. He learned guitar while in his early teens from a locally renowned blues guitarist known as Dudlow Joe. With aspirations to earn a living with his guitar, Townsend also worked as an auto mechanic, a shoe shiner, a hotel manager, and a salesman. By the late 1920s he had begun touring and

recording A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, ...

with the pianist Walter Davis and had acquired the nickname Mule, because he was sturdy in both physique and character. In St. Louis, he worked with some of the early blues pioneers, including J. D. Short. During this time period, he also learned to play the piano. Townsend was one of the only artists known to have recorded in nine consecutive decades. He first recorded in 1929, for

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

in Chicago, and remained active up to 2006. He performed on 35 recordings in 1935 alone. By the mid-1990s, Townsend and his one-time collaborator

Yank Rachell Yank Rachell (born James A. Rachel; March 16, 1903 or 1910 – April 9, 1997) was an American country blues musician who has been called an "elder statesman of the blues". His career as a performer spanned nearly seventy years, from the late 192 ...

were the only active blues artists whose careers had started in the 1920s. He recorded on several different labels, including Columbia,

Bluesville Records Bluesville Records was an American record label subsidiary of Prestige Records, launched in 1959, with the primary purpose of documenting the work of the older classic bluesmen passed over by the changing audience. Such bluesmen as Roosevelt Sykes, ...

, and

Folkways Records Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways. History The Folkways Records & Service ...

. By the mid-1950s, the popularity of the St. Louis style of blues had begun to wane in the United States, so Townsend worked in Europe where he felt his music was more appreciated. His European concerts drew large audiences, and he also appeared at many festivals. Townsend said wryly that he has been "rediscovered three or four times". Articulate and self-aware, with an excellent memory, Townsend gave many invaluable interviews to blues enthusiasts and scholars.

Paul Oliver Paul Hereford Oliver MBE (25 May 1927 – 15 August 2017) was an English architectural historian and writer on the blues and other forms of African-American music. He was equally distinguished in both fields, although it is likely that aficion ...

recorded him in 1960 and quoted him extensively in his 1967 work ''Conversations with the Blues''. That book was inducted into the

Blues Hall of Fame The Blues Hall of Fame is a music museum located at 421 S. Main Street in Memphis, Tennessee. Initially, the "Blues Hall of Fame" was not a physical building, but a listing of people who have significantly contributed to blues music. Started in 1 ...

in 1991, in the Classics of Blues Literature category. Thirty years later, Bill Greensmith edited thirty hours of taped interviews with Henry to produce a full autobiography, ''A Blues Life'', giving a vivid history of the blues scene in

St Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

and

East St Louis East St. Louis is a city in St. Clair County, Illinois. It is directly across the Mississippi River from Downtown St. Louis, Missouri and the Gateway Arch National Park. East St. Louis is in the Metro-East region of Southern Illinois. Once a b ...

in its prime. In 1979, Bob West recorded Townsend in St. Louis. That recording was released on CD in 2002 on Arcola Records as ''The Real St. Louis Blues''. Townsend died on September 24, 2006, at the age of 96, at St. Mary's Ozaukee Hospital, in

Mequon Mequon () is the largest city in Ozaukee County, in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, and the third-largest city in Wisconsin by land area. Located on Lake Michigan's western shore with significant commercial developments along Interstate 43, the com ...

, Wisconsin, just hours after having been the first person to be presented with a "key" in Grafton's Paramount Plaza Walk of Fame.

While enry Townsenddid not scorn his old recordings, he had no taste for spending his later years simply recreating them. Blues, for him, was a living medium, and he continued to express himself in it, most remarkably in his songwriting. —Tony Russell, ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''

Selected discography

* 1966: ''Blues Rediscoveries'' (

) * 1970: ''The Country Blues: Vol. 2'' (Folkways Records) * 1973: ''Henry T. Music Man'' (

Adelphi Records Adelphi Records is an American independent record label founded in 1968 and incorporated in 1970 by Gene Rosenthal. History The label name was crafted by Rosenthal to suggest a combination of the Pythia, Greek oracle, nearby Adelphi, Maryland, as ...

AD1016) * 1980: ''Mule'' (Nighthawk) * 1984: ''The Blues in St. Louis, Vol. 3: Henry Townsend'' (Folkways Records) * 1998: ''The 88 Blues'' (Blueberry Hill Records) * 2001: ''The Real St. Louis Blues'' (Arcola Records, recorded 1979) * 2003: ''Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways'' (

Smithsonian Folkways Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was fou ...

) * 2004: ''My Story'' (APO Records) * 2007: '' Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas'' (Blue Shoe Project) * 2008: ''Classic Piano Blues from Smithsonian Folkways'' (Smithsonian Folkways) * 2015: ''Original St. Louis Blues Live'' (Wolf Records, recorded 1980)

Filmography

* 1970, reissued 1986: ''Blues Like Showers of Rain'' * 1999: ''Hellhounds on My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson'' (directed by

Robert Mugge Robert Mugge (born May 8, 1950) is an American documentary film maker. He has focused primarily on films about music and musicians, but some of his earliest films were not music focused and he is now continuing to branch out as his interests and ...

) * 2007: ''10 Days Out: Blues From the Backroads'' * unknown date: ''The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues''

Awards and honors

In 1980, Townsend's album ''Mule'' was nominated in the first national

Blues Music Award The Blues Music Awards, formerly known as the W. C. Handy Awards (or "The Handys"), are awards presented by the Blues Foundation, a non-profit organization set up to foster blues heritage. The awards were originally named in honor of W. C. Handy, " ...

s in the Traditional Blues Album category. In 1982, his album ''St. Louis Blues'' (with his wife Vernell Townsend) was nominated for a Blues Music Award in the Traditional Blues Album category. Townsend was a recipient of a 1985

National Heritage Fellowship The National Heritage Fellowship is a lifetime honor presented to master folk and traditional artists by the National Endowment for the Arts. Similar to Japan's Living National Treasure award, the Fellowship is the United States government's h ...

awarded by the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. In 1995 he was inducted into the

St. Louis Walk of Fame The St. Louis Walk of Fame honors notable people from St. Louis, Missouri, who made contributions to the culture of the United States. All inductees were either born in the Greater St. Louis area or spent their formative or creative years ther ...

. On February 10, 2008, Townsend was posthumously awarded a Grammy, his first, at the

50th Annual Grammy Awards The 50th Annual Grammy Awards took place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, on February 10, 2008. It honored musical achievement of 2007 in which albums were released between October 1, 2006, through September 30, 2007. The primary ceremonies ...

. The award, in the category

Best Traditional Blues Album The Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album was awarded from 1983 to 2011 and from 2017 onwards. Until 1992 the award was known as Best Traditional Blues Performance and was twice awarded to individual tracks rather than albums. The award w ...

, was given for his performances on '' Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live In Dallas'', released by the Blue Shoe Project. Townsend's son, Alonzo Townsend, accepted the award on his behalf. On December 4, 2009, a marker commemorating Townsend was added to the

Mississippi Blues Trail The Mississippi Blues Trail was created by the Mississippi Blues Commission in 2006 to place interpretive markers at the most notable historical sites related to the birth, growth, and influence of the blues throughout (and in some cases beyond) t ...

References

External links