Musician: Shirley Griffith

Shirley Griffith bridged the blues from Leroy Carr in the 1930s to the festivals of the 1960s. Born near Jackson, Mississippi, Griffith started playing the guitar around the age of 10. He learned the basics from an aunt and uncle and the blues from a well-known Mississippi musician named Tommy Johnson. He moved to Indianapolis in late 1928, and for a while he scraped together a living playing on Indiana Avenue and around town, becoming friends with both Carr and Blackwell. Carr had even made plans to take him to a New York recording session in 1935 but then died before this happened.

Eventually Griffith got a job at the Chevrolet body plant and settled with his wife into a home on California Street. He devoted one room to music, where he kept his two guitars and a tape recorder. In the 1960s, he recorded two albums for Bluesville Records, one solo and one with his friend John Tyler Adams. Griffith also played at several festivals, sometimes with blues mandolinist Yank Rachell. You can listen to him here.