NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The city of Nashville is naming a street after Grand Ole Opry pioneer 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. Two of Bailey’s grandsons, Carlos DeFord Bailey and Herchel Bailey will perform at a concert after the dedication.
Bailey overcame huge obstacles on his way to stardom. He contracted polio as a child, which led him to learn the harmonica while he was bedridden. He came from a family of Black musicians and his music created a link between the rural “Black hillbilly music” he learned living in Smith County, Tennessee, and the contemporary country music that was being formed on the Opry stage.
“He traveled throughout the South with Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe and Minnie Pearl and that gang there, and he was the star of the show,” said his grandson Carlos DeFord Bailey.
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…
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