Henry Townsend, born in Shelby on October 27, 1909, was the only blues artist to have recorded during every decade from the 1920s to the 2000s. A master guitarist and pianist, he played an integral role in the St. Louis blues scene of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s after spending his earliest years in Shelby and near Lula and then settling in St. Louis as a preteen. He made his recording debut in 1929 and in the 1930s recorded with leading blues artists including Roosevelt Sykes, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson, Robert Nighthawk, Big Joe Williams, and Walter Davis. A prolific and spontaneous composer, he claimed credit for writing the first version of “Every Day I Have the Blues,” recorded by Aaron “Pine Top” Sparks in 1935. After World War II he continued to record with Davis but increasingly worked outside music, later recording his first album for folklorist Sam Charters in 1961 and over the following decades touring, recording several albums, and mentoring younger artists in St. Louis. He received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1985 and was awarded a posthumous Grammy in 2008 for his participation on Last of The Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen - Live in Dallas. Townsend died on September 24, 2006, after long being regarded as a patriarch of the St. Louis blues scene. Shelby also produced or nurtured other performers who later found fame elsewhere, including Erma Franklin, Hattie Littles, Choker Campbell, Gerald Wilson, the Kelly Brothers, the Johns Brothers, Jo Jo Murray, and Willie Kent, while the town itself maintained a reputation as one of the Delta’s most active centers for blues entertainment through its clubs and juke joints.