Henry Gray born 19 January 1925

Henry Gray (January 19, 1925 – February 17, 2020) was an American blues piano player and singer. He played for more than seven decades and performed with many artists, including Robert Lockwood Jr., Billy Boy Arnold, Morris Pejoe, the Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf. He has more than 58 albums to his credit, including recordings for Chess Records. He is credited as helping to create the distinctive sound of the Chicago blues piano. 

Shortly after he was born, Gray, an only child, moved with his parents to a farm in Alsen, Louisiana, a few miles north of Baton Rouge, where he lived during his childhood. He began studying the piano at the age of eight, taking lessons from a neighborhood woman, Mrs. White. Gray also credits the radio and music records in his home for inspiring his love of music at an early age. A few years later, he began playing piano and organ at the local Baptist church, and his family eventually acquired a piano for the house. Playing the blues was not encouraged in his family, “There was no blues in the house,” he said years later. “They’d say ‘it’s the devil’s music,’” but Henry played blues at Mrs. White's house. 

Though he initially stuck to spirituals, by the age of 16 he had begun to earn a living playing in bands around the area. The steady income helped quell his family’s reservations. A wartime stint in the US army followed, during which he spent much of his time playing his piano to entertain the troops. He always maintained it kept him from being sent into combat. “Piano saved my life,” he frequently said. “I didn’t have to go on the front line and get killed.” Shortly before the war was over, Gray was given a medical discharge from the army. 

After returning from the army in 1946 he spent a week at home before heading north to Chicago, the city’s fast pace and bright lights having left an indelible impression on him during a trip years earlier. Once there he linked up with other southern musicians, though the most important connection he made was with Big Maceo Merriweather. Merriweather’s modern, hard-blues piano style proved a huge influence, laying the foundations of a style Gray would continue to play for the rest of his life. When the elder bluesman suffered a debilitating stroke, Gray played alongside him: Gray would play the left-hand part, Merriweather the right. 

A meeting with Muddy Waters’ guitarist Jimmy Rogers proved to be Gray’s big break. In August 1952 he entered the recording studio for the first time, playing behind Rogers at Chess Records. It was the first of many sessions at Chess, and he would gain a reputation as one of the city’s finest pianists. He toured with Little Walter who nicknamed the young pianist "Bird Breast" and picked up an astonishing array of casual gigs throughout Chicago. His playing partners serve as a who’s-who of Chicago’s finest: Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, JB Lenoir, Elmore James, Earl Hooker, Jimmy Reed. 

                    "Here's Mazotta Boogie from above album."

                               

He joined Wolf’s band in 1956, going on to become his primary pianist for most of the next 12 years. From the start the relationship between the two was amicable and professional. “Some musicians didn’t like Wolf telling them what to do and what to wear,” he said in 2001. “But if your name was out there, would you want a band behind you with their asses hanging out?” He played on some of Wolf’s greatest sides, including I Ain’t Superstitious and Goin’ Down Slow, and led his band through a period of huge success. By the time Gray left, his boss was the toast of young musicians in the US and, especially, the UK. 

Henry with Fats Domino

Gray returned to Louisiana in 1968 following the death of his father, initially helping in the family business before working as a roofer from 1968 to 1983 whist still performing. A sideman for most of his career, his big, rollicking sound became part of the region's "swamp blues" style. He recorded more under his own name in later years and was nominated for a Grammy award for his playing on Tribute to Howlin’ Wolf (1999). He played festivals throughout Louisiana and further afield: in his 80s he continued to travel, as far as Paris (for Mick Jagger’s 55th birthday party) and Rio de Janeiro.  Gray was a recipient of the 2006 National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation's top honor for folk artists. 

Gray suffered from alcoholism, but was sober for many years during his later life. He faced some hard times over the last few years of his life, losing most of his possessions in the 2016 Louisiana floods and incurring a collapsed lung and mild heart attack in 2017. But he never stopped playing. In the last year of his life Gray could be found happily tinkering away in restaurants throughout Baton Rouge, playing the same tasteful piano rolls that Merriweather taught him, that had filled smoky barrooms in Chicago and made Howlin’ Wolf’s eyes light up. In 2017, Gray was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame. 

Despite this double health scare, Henry Gray continued playing the blues. On October 10, 2019, it was confirmed by Gray's family that he had entered hospice care in Baton Rouge. He died there at the age of 95 on February 17, 2020. 

(Edited from Guardian article by Jack Barlow & Wikipedia)