DeFord Bailey was known as both the “Harmonica Wizard” and a Grand Ole Opry pioneer.
The city of Nashville is naming a street after DeFord Bailey, the"Harmonica Wizard," whose popularity and contributions to country music and blues are still being recognized decades later. On Saturday, DeFord Bailey Avenue will be officially dedicated in the Edgehill neighborhood of Nashville where Bailey lived most of his life until his death in 1982. NASHVILLE, Tenn.
In 1927, Bailey’s performance of “Pan American Blues,” in which his harmonica imitated the sound of a rolling locomotive, helped inspire the name “Grand Ole Opry,” and he was the first musician to hold a major recording session in Nashville in 1928. Despite his success and popularity, Bailey faced racism during the Jim Crow Era of segregation in the South, especially while touring with other white Opry members.
Bailey’s impact on country music was overlooked or whitewashed from the history books for decades. Acuff, for example, argued publicly shortly after Bailey’s death that Bailey’s music didn’t rise to the level of other Country Music Hall of Fame members like himself.
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