Townsend, Henry

Townsend, Henry 27 October 1909; Shelby, MS Townsend had a typical, almost clichéd, early life for a blues singer, moving a number of times from Mississippi to Cairo, Illinois, in his childhood before running away from home at age nine. There he shined shoes at a speakeasy and acted as a go-between with bootleggers before working briefly in a refining and rubber plant. As he said himself in his autobiography, “I knew how to live without doing too much of anything.” He was inspired to take up…