15 Facts About James Crutchfield

James Crutchfield was a St Louis barrelhouse blues singer, piano player and songwriter whose career spanned seven decades.

James Crutchfield's repertoire consisted of original and classic blues and boogie-woogie and Depression-era popular songs.

James Crutchfield told me I was born in '12, in Baton Rouge, when the high water was highest.

In 1927, working as an underage employee for a local railroad, James Crutchfield lost his left leg below the knee in a coupling accident.

James Crutchfield worked as accompanist to Joe Pullum in the early 1930s and performed with him in Texas and Louisiana, occasionally hopping freight trains for transportation.

James Crutchfield was to play Pullum's hit "Black Gal" for the rest of his life.

In 1948, James Crutchfield moved to St Louis, Missouri, a city with a venerable blues piano tradition dating back to the ragtime era.

James Crutchfield worked in the Gaslight Square entertainment district at various venues, including a decade-long residency at "Miss Rosalee's" Left Bank.

In 1955, James Crutchfield was appearing with Bat the Hummingbird at a bar located at 2220 Market Street that was formerly Tom Turpin's Rosebud Saloon, where Scott Joplin had performed half a century earlier.

James Crutchfield was found there by Bob Koester, on a tip from police detective Charlie O'Brien, and recorded a few days later, along with Speckled Red, by Ralph and Ethel Hiatt.

James Crutchfield was professionally inactive in the 1970s and worked as a cook at the State Hospital for a number of years.

James Crutchfield traveled to Groningen, Netherlands, later that year and recorded the album Original Barrelhouse Blues, which was re-released on CD in 2001 as St Louis Blues Piano.

James Crutchfield received a publicity boost when he was selected as the first recipient of the Lillian Carter Award for Outstanding Senior Citizen in 1984.

James Crutchfield played the 1988 St Louis Blues Festival at the Jefferson Memorial in Forest Park, appeared every weekend at Allen Avenue, and began playing every Wednesday night for the next 12 years at Venice Cafe, where many of St Louis' top blues and jazz musicians would often sit in.

James Crutchfield died of complications of heart disease on December 7,2001, in St Louis, almost the last bluesman of his era.