Throwback Thursday: Porter Parish Grainger’s blues come home

Bowling Green has a rich musical heritage. We’ve covered many famous musicians and artists who called Bowling Green home. This week, Porter Parish Grainger’s blues music and culture came home and was celebrated for the first time. At the inaugural Porter Parish Grainger Blues Festival at the historic Capitol in Downtown Bowling Green, this homecoming took center stage with live music, workshops, and making new memories.

Born in Bowling Green in October 1891, Porter Parish Grainger faced challenges to the African American community culture at the turn of the 20th century. Growing up in the post-Civil War era of Jim Crow, there were still lingering memories of enslaved life in the Deep South. Grainger grew up in the historic Shake Rag district at the Southern Queen Hotel, in the home of James and Mattie Covington. The Covingtons sold the home to the Moses family, who ran the hotel for half a century, thru integration and the Civil Rights era. The home is currently being rebuilt as the Southern Queen by Bellvue.

Another Bowling Green native and African American musician who changed the name of the game for the race during this time was Ernest Hogan, who became the first Black performer and producer on Broadway in New York City. During a time with Vaudeville style shows swept the country, often poking fun at African American culture, Hogan opened doors for the Black culture. Porter Parish Grainger stepped thru them with the dawn of the blues, in his songwriting and performing with some of the most notable Black artists of the time.

The blues are a cornerstone of African American culture, they carry hope, heartbreak, and history covering over a century. Born in Black communities across the south, blues carried work songs, spirituals, and everyday conversation into a style that reshaped American music. Porter Parish Grainger moved to Chicago by the early 1910s, and then to New York by the 1920s when jazz and ragtime were reaching new heights during the country’s cultural revival that turned the Victorian era upside down.

With the support of the Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation, the Kentucky Folklife Program, and the Kentucky Arts Council, the inaugural Porter Parish Grainger Blues Festival in Bowling Green last weekend brought new names and faces to the local entertainment scene. Hosting workshops, exhibits, and performances with some of the most famous African American entertainers of the genre today, like Jontavius Willis, Marjorie Marshall, Lamont Jack Pearley, and Michael Jones.

The festival introduced the history of blues to this community, known for embracing its musical heritage with open arms. With the inclusion of blues preservation presentations, and its influence on early country blues and electric blues, this festival intends to become an annual celebration in the Bowling Green area community that keeps more oral histories alive and continues its storytelling traditions.

Find out more information by visiting the Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation website. That’s it for this week, brought to you by the Kentucky Museum. In Bowling Green, because local matters, Telia Butler, WNKY News 40.