Music
Big Maceo Merriweather
1905–1953 · blues pianist, singer
Georgia-born blues pianist who learned his trade in Detroit in the 1920s and 1930s, wrote "Worried Life Blues" and was buried in metro Detroit.
- Born
Newnan, Georgia- Died
Chicago, Illinois
aged 47- Birth name
- Major Merriweather
- Also known as
- Big Maceo
- Detroit years
- 1920s–1941
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Major Merriweather, a big man soon known as Big Maceo, moved to Detroit in the 1920s as a young, largely self-taught pianist and spent the next decade and a half playing the city's house parties and bars. In 1941 he went to Chicago, where he met guitarist Tampa Red, who became his partner and helped him land a contract with Bluebird Records. His first session that year produced "Worried Life Blues," with its famous line about one day not worrying anymore; it became a blues standard. Instrumentals such as "Chicago Breakdown" and "Detroit Jump" made him a model for the next generation of Chicago pianists, including Otis Spann. A stroke in 1946 left his right hand weak, and he died of a heart attack in Chicago in 1953. He was brought back to be buried at Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery in Warren.
Highlights
- "Worried Life Blues" (Bluebird, 1941), later inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame
- Piano pieces "Chicago Breakdown", "Texas Stomp" and "Detroit Jump"
- Longtime partner of guitarist Tampa Red
- Inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2002
- Buried at Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery, Warren
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Buried here · 1953
Detroit Memorial Park East
The Black-founded cemetery in Warren where Big Maceo was buried after his death in Chicago.