St. Louis Highlights Its Blues Heritage

There's a widely held belief that blues music was born in the Mississippi Delta, traveled up river to places like Memphis and then north to Chicago.

This photo released by the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission shows a guitarist playing at the Blues Festival. (AP Photo/St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission)

(AP)

Not so fast, St. Louis says.

A gallery exhibit, a new book and a nonprofit group are making the case that St. Louis brought together a mix of country and city musicians, resulting in significant contributions to the genre.

"It's a shame we don't have a natural shrine to the genre," said Paul Reuter, executive director of the Sheldon Arts Foundation, which was formed to preserve the historic Sheldon Concert Hall. "There's no place to take a picture and say `this is where it all began.'"

At the Sheldon Art Galleries, a show has opened called "Legends of St. Louis Blues Music" which will run through Aug. 28, 2010. St. Louisans interested in highlighting the city's blues past note it's hard to find blockbuster items to display. Framed records, photos and posters give a sense of the blues, but it's still sound and video clips that provide the best examples of the music's unvarnished power.

The Sheldon will also feature live performances, like a gala featuring blues and jazz singer Kim Massie, in conjunction with the show.

A nonprofit, the St. Louis Rhythm & Blues Preservation Society, is organizing new master classes, pitched as an opportunity for people to learn from blues and rhythm and blues performers, who will tell stories, play music and perhaps teach student musicians.

Early events will be held at the Portfolio Gallery in the city's Grand Center arts district. The hope is to eventually have a permanent music collection and venue space.

One of the first performers to be presented is blues harmonica player Big George Brock. At 77, Brock is a natural storyteller, who talks easily about growing up in Mississippi, playing music with Muddy Waters in Brock's mother's backyard during fish fries, working as a sharecropper in cotton fields, becoming a boxer who once beat Sonny Liston and fathering, he claims, 42 children.