Sheldon Harris ''(né'' Sheldon Hand Harris; 13 August 1924 Cuyahoga County, Ohio — 8 September 2005

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...

) was an American amateur jazz and blues historian and collector. His book, ''Blues Who's Who'', a result of his 20 years of research, details the biographies of 571 singers. It is a recognized reference in the field of

blues music 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 A ...

. In 1981 it won the Memphis

Blues Foundation The Blues Foundation is an American nonprofit corporation, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the County seat, seat of Shelby County, Tennessee, Shelby County in the southwest part of t ...

W.C. Handy Award WC or wc may refer to: * Water closet or flush toilet Arts and entertainment * W.C. (film), ''W.C.'' (film), an Irish feature film * WC (band), a Polish punk rock band * WC (rapper), a rapper from Los Angeles, California * Westside Connectio ...

and in 1983 won 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 ...

Award" in the classics of blues literature category."Finding Aid for the Sheldon Harris Collection (MUM00682)"

University of Mississippi The University of Mississippi ( byname Ole Miss) is a public research university that is located adjacent to Oxford, Mississippi, and has a medical center in Jackson. It is Mississippi's oldest public university and its largest by enrollment. ...

Libraries, Archives & Special Collections

Sheldon Harris Collection

Harris donated his collection to the

. It includes over 1,800 78-rpm discs, 589 pieces of sheet music, photographs, and his research materials. The collection is digitized and available online.

Books

*1986: Clyde E. B. Bernhardt, Sheldon Harris, ''I Remember: Eighty Years of Black Entertainment, Big Bands, and the Blues'', 1986, University of Pennsylvania Press, *1979: Sheldon Harris
''Blues Who's Who: A Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers''
Arlington House,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Sheldon 1924 births 2005 deaths American music historians American male non-fiction writers University of Mississippi Writers from Cleveland Writers from New York City Historians from New York (state) 20th-century American musicologists Historians from Ohio