Washboard Sam

Born Robert Brown in Walnut Ridge on July 15, 1910, Washboard Sam rose from his Arkansas childhood and teenage move to Memphis to become a major blues performer of the 1930s and 1940s. A master of the washboard, with a strong voice and songwriting talent, he played as a street musician in Memphis with performers including Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon before moving to Chicago in 1932. There he became a popular performer and recording artist, often performing and recording with Big Bill Broonzy and also working with Memphis Slim, Bukka White, Willie Lacey, and Jazz Gillum. He played to packed halls and recorded over 160 tracks for Bluebird and Vocalion, but in the postwar years the hokum blues style for which he was known lost ground to electrified blues. He continued recording for RCA Victor and Chess, then retired from music in the 1950s and worked for a time as a Chicago policeman. Drawn back during the blues revival of the 1960s, he performed and recorded again in Chicago and played several dates in Europe in 1964 before declining health led to his death from heart disease on November 6, 1966, at age 56. Impoverished when he died, he was buried in an unmarked grave in Homewood, Illinois, but a 2009 benefit concert later made possible a headstone for his grave.

Walnut Ridge, Arkansas · United States