Notable Musicians interred at Oak Woods Cemetery
Pops (Roebuck) Staples
Pops (Roebuck) Staples was a renowned America gospel and R&B musician. A leading figure in gospel in the1960s and 1970s, Pops was an accomplished songwriter, guitarist, and singer. He was the patriarch, founder (along with his wife Oceola) and member of the legendary singing group The Staple Singers, which included his son Pervis and daughters Mavis, Yvonne, and Cleotha. Born December 28, 1914, Pops (Roebuck) Staples grew up on a cotton plantation near Drew, Mississippi, the town where Emmett Till was lynched in 1955. From his earliest years Pops heard, and began to play with, local blues guitarists such as Charlie Patton (who lived on the nearby Dockery Plantation) and Robert Johnson. In 1933, he married Oceola Staples (also buried in Oak Woods) whom he met in Drew, and in 1935, they migrated north to escape the racism in Mississippi and settled on the south side of Chicago. Pops and Martin Luther King, Jr. were great fans of each other and close friends. Over the course of his career, Pops Staples was nominated for three Grammy Awards, winning the 1995 Best Contemporary Blues Album Grammy for Father, Father
The Staples family actually performed at an early Folk Fest at UChicago on February 4th, 1962. Click Here to Listen to the Performance
Click Here to see an article from the Hyde Park Herald listing the Staples Family as one of the many musicians performing at the fest.
Oceola Staples
Born September 10, 1917, in Louisville, Mississippi, Oceola Staples married Roebuck Staples in 1933 and the couple moved to Chicago two years later. By the mid-1950s the couple’s children were performing as the Staple Singers with Roebuck playing guitar. Affectionately known as "Mom Staples," while Oceola never performed with the group, her support and encouragement is frequently cited as essential to the group’s success.
Otis Lee Clay
Otis Lee Clay was an American R&B and soul singer who started in gospel music. He was born on February 11, 1942, in Waxhaw, Mississippi to a musical family who moved north in 1953 to Indiana.
After singing with a local gospel group, he returned to Mississippi to sing with the Christian Travelers, before settling in Chicago in 1957. There he joined a series of gospel vocal groups including the Golden Jubilaires, the Famous Blue Jay Singers, the Holy Wonders, and the Pilgrim Harmonizers, before making his first solo secular recordings in 1962 which were unissued. Clay then joined the Gospel Songbirds, who recorded in Nashville in 1964.
Clay became renowned nationally and internationally. He remained a popular live act in Europe and Japan, and recorded three live albums, Soul Man: Live in Japan, Otis Clay Live, and Respect Yourself, recorded live at the Lucerne Blues Festival in Switzerland. Ultimately, he recorded 18 albums during his career.
In 2010, Clay was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Waxhaw. As a resident of Chicago's West Side, he was actively involved in community-based economic and cultural initiatives, including the development of The Harold Washington Cultural Center in Bronzeville.
In 2013, Clay was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Jessie Bartlett Davis
Born in 1860, opera singer Jessie Bartlett Davis won much applause throughout the country by her singing of "Oh Promise Me," of which a portion of the song being is inscribed on her headstone. Davis was billed as "America's Representative Contralto.”
Ermine Smith Morris
Ermine Smith Morris attended Bransford High School before studying commerce at Tennessee State University Nashville. As a pianist for the St. John M.E. church, Ermine Smith Morris became known as an excellent musician within the community. Ermine Smith Morris took a position teaching at Bransford High School before marrying Wilberforce University professor Samuel S. Morris, Jr in the Smith family living room in 1943. When the couple moved to Chicago, both took on leadership roles in the church, with Samuel becoming the presiding prelate of the Fourth Episcopal District, and Ermine taking on the role of episcopal supervisor of the Women’s Missionary Society of the Fourth Episcopal District, AME church.
Sam Golden
A devoted cellist and chamber musician, Sam Golden was born in 1927. In 1969 along with his wife Paula Golden and the late Zita Cogan of the University of Chicago Music Department, and resort owner Richard Gray, he founded the Golden Chamber Music at Sleepy Hollow in South Haven, Michigan, a wonderful outlet for adult musicians to come together in musical fellowship. Golden and his wife Paula, also a cellist, were a team at Golden Chamber Music. An attorney by training, Golden had a long career at the University of Chicago as part of the inhouse legal department. He was a graduate of the Hutchins College and the University of Chicago Law School. Golden began his career in Leon Depres' law office practicing labor law. In 1953, he became labor attorney at Argonne National Laboratory, shortly after he became chief counsel there.
Albertina Walker
Born in 1929 in Chicago, Albertina Walker was American gospel singer, songwriter, actress, and humanitarian. She began singing in a youth church choir at an early age and joined several gospel groups. Albertina was greatly influenced by the influential gospel singer Mahalia Jackson whom Jackson took on the road when Albertina was just a teenager. In the early 1950s, Walker founded her own gospel music group The Caravans.
Walker co-founded the Gospel Music Workshop of America. She also lent her support to many charitable organizations such as United Negro College Fund, National Council of Negro Women, and the NAACP. In 1988, Walker founded The Albertina Walker Scholarship Foundation for the Creative and Performing Arts.
Albertina was conferred an honorary degree by the Chicago Theological Seminary, an affiliate of the University of Chicago.
Little Brother Montgomery
Born in 1906, Eurreal Wilford "Little Brother" Montgomery was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and blues pianist and singer.
Largely self-taught, Montgomery was versatile, working in jazz bands, including larger ensembles that used written arrangements. With no ability to read music, he learned band routines by ear.
Early in his career he performed at African American lumber and turpentine camps in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. In the late 1950s, Montgomery was discovered by a wider white audience. As his fame grew and spread internationally, Montgomery continued to make many recordings, some on his own record label.
Eddie Harris
Eddie Harris was an American jazz musician, best known for playing tenor saxophone and for introducing the electrically amplified saxophone. He was also accomplished on the electric piano and organ. His best-known compositions are "Freedom Jazz Dance", popularized by Miles Davis in 1966, and "Listen Here".
Harris was born in Chicago in1934. He studied music under at DuSable High School, as had many other successful Chicago musicians including Nat King Cole. He later studied music at Roosevelt University by which time he was proficient on piano, vibraphone, and tenor saxophone.
In 1969, he performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival and in 1970, at the Newport Jazz Festival. For the 11th Annual Grammy Awards in 1968, Eddie was nominated for the Best Instrumental Jazz Performance for Small Group or Soloist with Small Group for the album The Electrifying Eddie Harris.
Junior Wells
Born in 1934 in Memphis, Tennessee, Junior Well was a singer, harmonica player, and recording artist. He moved to Chicago in 1948 with his mother and began sitting in with local musicians at house parties and taverns.
Wells is best known for his signature song "Messin’ With the Kid” and his 1965 album Hoodoo Man Blues described as "one of the truly classic blues albums of the 1960s".
Wells told the following story, printed on the cover of Hoodoo Man Blues: "I went to this pawnshop downtown and the man had a harmonica priced at $2.00. I got a job on a soda truck... played hookey from school ... worked all week and on Saturday the man gave me a dollar and a half. A dollar and a half! For a whole week of work. I went to the pawnshop and the man said the price was two dollars. I told him I had to have that harp. He walked away from the counter – left the harp there. So I laid my dollar-and-a-half on the counter and picked up the harp. When my trial came up, the judge asked me why I did it. I told him I had to have that harp. The judge asked me to play it and when I did he gave the man the 50 cents and hollered 'Case dismissed!'
Wells performed and recorded with various blues musicians, including Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy. He remained a fixture on the blues scene throughout his career and crossed over to rock audiences while touring with the Rolling Stones.
Thomas A. Dorsey
Born in 1899 in rural Georgia, Dorsey was a musician, composer, and Christian evangelical influencer in the development of early blues and gospel music. He wrote 3,000 songs, a third of them gospel, including "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" and "Peace in the Valley.”
Dorsey moved to Chicago and became a composer and arranger of jazz and vaudeville music just as blues was becoming popular.
Following a spiritual awakening, Dorsey focused on religious music. Dorsey served as the music director at Chicago's Pilgrim Baptist Church for 50 years, introducing and encouraging personal elements of participation such as clapping, stomping, and shouting when these were widely condemned as unrefined.
In 1932, Dorsey co-founded the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses, an organization that remains active today. The first generation of gospel singers in the 20th century who worked or trained with Dorsey include Mahalia Jackson and James Cleveland.
Author and Grammy Award winner Anthony Heilbut summarized Dorsey's influence by saying he "combined the good news of gospel with the bad news of blues". Called the "Father of Gospel Music" and often credited with creating it, Dorsey more accurately spawned a movement that popularized gospel blues throughout black churches in the United States, which in turn influenced American music and society at large.
Odie Payne
Born Odie Payne Jr. in Chicago in 1926, Payne was an American blues drummer. From an early age, Payne was interested in a wide range of musical genres. After studying music in high school, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Following his discharge, Payne graduated from Chicago’s Roy C. Knapp School of Percussion that had been founded in 1921.
Noted for his use of the cowbell, base drum pedal and extended cymbal and drum roll, Payne’s double-shuffle drumming technique was often copied. The technique called for Payne to use both hands to produce the shuffle effect.
Over his long career he worked with a range of musicians, including Muddy Waters, Little Brother Montgomery, Memphis Minnie, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Guy.
William H. Dixon
Born in 1879 in West Virginia, William H. Dixon was a talented pianist, composer, musician, singer, songwriter, music publisher, playwright, stage manager, conductor, bandleader, and vaudeville performer.
In early 1905, Will H. Dixon, was one of several promising Black composers as well as conductors, who formed the Memphis Students Company comprised of chorus, orchestra, and a variety troupe.
It was reported later in 1905 that "France was soon to be invaded by some of the best vaudeville talent.” The Company traveled to Europe for a three-month engagement at the Follies Berge in Paris, where the show was met with great success.
Once described as "Chock Full of Ambition", Dixone went on to establish his own music company in New York City in 1907.
During his short lifespan (he died in 1917), his name was widely known to Chicagoans and New Yorkers. Dixon married Chicago's Madam Maude Seay in 1912. "Madam Seay" as she was professionally known established a highly successful millinery business enterprise. She was dubbed "The Queen of Milliner's" and the Seay Millinery Shop's reputation spanned from Chicago to San Francisco.
Edwin Othello Excell
Edwin Othello Excell (December 13, 1851 – June 10, 1921), commonly known as E. O. Excell, was a prominent American music publisher, composer, song leader, and singer, who left a lasting impact on the church music scene during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in Uniontown, Ohio, he honed his musical talents under the guidance of George F. and Frederick W. Root. Excell's career was marked by collaborations with influential figures like Sam P. Jones, William E. Biederwolf, and Charles H. Gabriel, contributing to revival meetings and religious conventions. His remarkable musical skills and extraordinary voice enabled him to lead large choirs and deliver captivating performances. Excell's 1909 arrangement of "Amazing Grace" became widely recognized, and his music publishing business flourished, producing hymnbooks that left a significant imprint on American popular culture. With a legacy spanning around ninety song books and an estimated two thousand songs, E. O. Excell remains a key figure in the history of American hymnody.
Most Biographies by Dottie Jeffries, HPHS Board Member 2023 and some biographies by Mallory Price, HPHS Board Member, 2023