Henry C. Speir, a music store owner in Jackson, Mississippi, was responsible for launching the recording careers of most of the greatest Mississippi bluesmen in the 1920s and ’30s. In the job he referred to as ‘talent broker,’ he sent Charley Patton, Skip James, Tommy Johnson, Ishmon Bracey, Bo Carter, the Mississippi Sheiks, Blind Joe Reynolds, Blind Roosevelt Graves, Geeshie Wiley, and Robert Wilkins, among others, on their way to record for companies such as Paramount, Victor, Decca, OKeh, and Vocalion. By way of referral, Speir’s activities also led to the first recordings of Son House, Willie Brown, and Robert Johnson. Speir supervised a number of sessions himself and attended many others in Texas, Wisconsin, Georgia, and elsewhere. Sometimes Speir traveled hundreds of miles in search of talent; at other times blues singers would line up to audition at his store on Farish Street, as depicted in the recent Martin Scorsese blues series. Speir, who was born in Prospect, Mississippi, on October 6, 1895, died in Jackson in 1972.
