Sheldon Harris ''(né'' Sheldon Hand Harris; 13 August 1924

Cuyahoga County, Ohio Cuyahoga County ( or , see ) is a large urban County (United States), county located in the Northeast Ohio, northeastern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. The county seat and most populous city is Cleveland. As of the 2020 United States census, ...

— 8 September 2005

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

) 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 that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

. In 1981 it won the Memphis Blues Foundation's W.C. Handy Award and in 1983 won the "

Blues Hall of Fame The Blues Hall of Fame is a music museum operated by the Blues Foundation 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 b ...

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

University of Mississippi The University of Mississippi (Epithet, byname Ole Miss) is a Public university, public research university in University, near Oxford, Mississippi, United States, with a University of Mississippi Medical Center, medical center in Jackson, Miss ...

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 Blues historians Historians of jazz